
                     -------------------------------------
                     SUGGESTIONS FOR USING FLEET EVALUATOR

                      (Please read feval.txt before this)
                      -----------------------------------


1. Reading the reports

If you read the documentation now you know that the main purpose of Fleet
Evaluator is to generate a certain number of "reports", plain-text files
with ordered data.

To make an example, here are some typical report lines:

---------------------------------CUT----------------------------------------

Fleet Evaluator 0.9.5b Report - Complete list by race + hull mass order.
                                (Freighters and unknown hulls last)

Turn Number: 116

+-----+-----+--------------------------------+----------------------+...
| id  |Race | Hull                           | Name                 |
+-----+-----+--------------------------------+----------------------+...
| 224 | Fed | MERLIN CLASS ALCHEMY SHIP      | ELABORATOR           |
|   4 | Fed | NOVA CLASS SUPER-DREADNOUGHT   | NOVA CLASS SUPER-DRE |
| 121 | Fed | NOVA CLASS SUPER-DREADNOUGHT   | YAMATO               |
| 232 | Fed | MISSOURI CLASS BATTLESHIP      | TEMPESTA             |
| 499 | Fed | NEBULA CLASS CRUISER           | CURIOSONE            |
| 269 | Fed | LARGE DEEP SPACE FREIGHTER     | OBELIX               |
| 429 | Fed | LARGE DEEP SPACE FREIGHTER     | IDEFIX               |
|   5 | Fed | MEDIUM DEEP SPACE FREIGHTER    | QUI                  |

...+-----+---+------+------+-----+----+
   |Head |Wrp| x    | y    |Mass |Tdif|
...+-----+---+------+------+-----+----+
   |  -1 | 7 | 1515 | 2741 | 1023|  -3|
   |  -1 | 0 | 1373 | 2927 |  780|  -3|
   |  67 | 9 | 1402 | 2427 | 1140|  -1|
   |  71 | 9 | 1794 | 2469 |  678|  -9|
   | 229 | 9 | 1411 | 2161 |  575|  -4|
   |  77 | 9 | 1436 | 2697 |  481|  -3|   
   | 307 | 9 | 1571 | 2671 |  523|  -2|
   | 124 | 9 | 1527 | 2418 |  263|   0|

[...]


Ship count by race
    ------------------

         Fed  Liz  Bir  Fas  Pri  Cyb  Cry  Emp  Rob  Reb  Col
         -----------------------------------------------------
    Cap   46   11   66    0  149    0    0   39    0    0   33  
    Fre   19    2    9    0   10    0    0    7    4    0    7  
         -----------------------------------------------------
    Unk   32   30    0    0    0    0    0   14    0    0   22  
         -----------------------------------------------------
    Tot   97   43   75    0  159    0    0   60    4    0   62  

---------------------------------CUT----------------------------------------

This type report (ferep_rh.txt) is first ordered by race (Fed to Colonies,
1..11), then by "hull mass", i.e. the weight of the hull (NOT of the ship,
just the hull, so cargo and weapons are not counted). 
Freighters (ships without ANY type of weapon) and "unknown hulls" (ships of
which FE cannot tell the hull, due to techical reasons WinPlan users should
have much less of these than planets.exe/VPA users).

With this report you can see the enemy biggest ships' first, the lighter ones
last, and have an idea of fleet strenght.

The "Head" column shows the heading of the ship, where "-1" means the ship
has no heading set (ships orbiting planets often are set so).

The "Tdif" column shows how old the info is, i.e. how many turns ago we saw
the ship with this ID last time. "-9" means that we saw it 9 turns ago, "0"
means that we saw it this turn. This is a critical info, because if a "0" is
set on this field you can be pretty sure that the info is correct and updated,
but if a bigger number is set, you would want to verify that a particular
ship hasn't been recycled/destroyed/given to another race or whatever.

The last lines help knowing how much our database is complete... in the
example shown, we know 46 Fed capital ships and 19 freighters... we also
know (from score) that the Feds have other 32 ships we know nothing of. Time
to send another couple Swifties there! :)

If we are allied to somebody, and thus we receive their .RSTs., we have a
complete list of that ally's ships too. This is useful for a greater precision
of FE database.


Here is another type report, the "Fleet Summary", feval_su.txt.

---------------------------------CUT----------------------------------------

Fleet Evaluator 0.9.5b Report - Summary by race + hull mass order
                                (freighters and unknown hulls last)

Turn Number: 117

[...]

Race: Col
     --------------------------------------
     MERLIN CLASS ALCHEMY SHIP        x  1
     VIRGO CLASS BATTLESTAR           x 15
     IRON LADY CLASS FRIGATE          x  6
     LADY ROYALE CLASS CRUISER        x  1
     COBOL CLASS RESEARCH CRUISER     x  4
     SAGITTARIUS CLASS TRANSPORT      x  2
     PATRIOT CLASS LIGHT CARRIER      x  2
     CYGNUS CLASS DESTROYER           x  2
     LARGE DEEP SPACE FREIGHTER       x  5
     MEDIUM DEEP SPACE FREIGHTER      x  2
     Not discovered                   x 22
     --------------------------------------
     T O T A L                          62

---------------------------------CUT----------------------------------------

Here you have a clear display of the strength of a fleet... your spies
discovered about two third of Colonies ships. From score, we know of a
total of 62 ships, 22 we know nothing of and 40 we have seen. Not bad, for
some turns of spying activity! :)



2. Creating a database from old turns

If you saved the RSTs of the entire game, you can generate a FE database at
any moment. In this case you may want to use the "/L" switch.

Let's say you unpacked all your turns in a series of directories called
"turn01", "turn02"... etc. From feval.exe main directory you could run the
program this way:


     c:\vgap\feval\FEVAL c:\vgap\game01.trn\turn01 /L /N
     c:\vgap\feval\FEVAL c:\vgap\game01.trn\turn02 /L /N
     c:\vgap\feval\FEVAL c:\vgap\game01.trn\turn03 /L /N
     [...]

Fleet Evaluator will create its database locally in c:\vgap\util, and will
update it with all the data it can find in ...\turnXX. Notice that I used
the "/(N)o reports" switch to speed up the process of loading several turns
without making useless reports every time.
When you have no more turns to load into database, you can generate the reports:

     c:\vgap\util\FEVAL /r



3. Using notepad.exe

If you are a Windows user you'll probably be using Notepad.exe to read those
.txt files generated by FE. Since the main reports are larger than the
standard 80 characters screen, you could find it annoying that some info is
out of screen, so you are forced to use the horizontal scrolling bars to see
it. To avoid this problem, you could modify the character size in
Options/Change character, setting the Courier New (or any other MONOspaced
font) from the standard 12 pixels to a still readable 9 pixels. 



4. Using Fleet Evaluator on a new game

If you are just starting a new game, you can take the best out of Fleet
Evaluator. Here is how you could proceed, assuming the game names "Alcor".

 a) Create a directory for feval.exe main program, and a subdirectory
    under that one to keep "Alcor"-related database and reports.

    \vgap
        \feval
           \alcor
           \anothergame
           \anothergame
           \...

 b) Create a batch file with the following instructions, assuming that your
    main vgaplanets drive is "c:" and that game data for VPA/Winplan is in
    c:\vgap\games\alcor:

    c:
    cd \vgap\feval\alcor
    c:\vgap\feval\feval.exe c:\vgap\games\alcor /l /n

    Have this file executed every time you unpack a new turn, just like you
    do, for example, with RandMax program. If you are a WinPlan user, create
    a unproc2.bat file in ...\vpworkx directory and have it call the batch
    file with FE instructions, so FE operations will be completely
    automatized.

 c) When some turns have passed and you have seen in space or on planets a
    good number of enemy ships, you could generate a report for "Alcor"
    game to extract those cumulated info:
    
    c:\vgap\feval\feval.exe c:\vgap\games\alcor /r



<cassa@geocities.com>
