The game cleary idicates that to control a system, you have to have a ship (non-fighter one) there and control every planet it contains.

What if the system has no planets!? Is it possible to control it (as a means of fullfilling some SE secret objectives) just by having a (non-fighter) ship there? Or is it uncontrollable?

Help end the war! hehe =P

Just a none fighter ship is then enough to secure control of the system.

Welcome in the TI3 community.

Like Ugluk said. To control a no-planet system, you have to have a ship there and control all zero planets. It's easy to control all zero planets - you don't even need a GF

That's what I think. But my friend states that the phrasing " and every planet on the system" indicates that the system has to have a planet (at least) in order to be controllable.

So the question pretty much comes down to what tha above phrase means regarding the system:

a) It means the number of planets in a the system is zero . And so you just need to control the vacuum space in order to control the system as a whole.

b) It means the number os planets is non-applicable (NA). And so it fails to have to possibility of being controlled at all.

I apreciate a lot all of yours comments, but it'd be great to have a clear official ruling on this too (and I'm writing that question for the FAQ too).

Sincerely,

Mauro Draco.

fillen7 said:

Smack your friend upside the head. He is rules lawyering.

There doesn't need to an official ruling on this because if it was choice(B) the game would be broken.

Bill

fillen7 said:

As bnorton says, your friend is just trying to be a weasel here. If there are 0 planets, it's easy to control "every planet in the system" - all of 0 is 0.

The purpose behind this definition of control is to indicate that you have ships there to protect the system, and that all the planets (if any) are yours. A "blank" system can still be controlled by your spacecraft.

For your consideration, I present the Public Objective Stage II "I control the Mecatol Rex system and all systems adjacent to it".

If there is even one empty space next to Mecatol, this objective would become unachievable.

Plus, as sigmazero said, all of 0 is 0. You still control every planet in the system.

Technically 0 out of 0 is undefined. However, the answer has been stated already.

To put it mathematic-ish-ly:

A system is represented by the following equation:

System= space + x planets

To control space you need at least 1 non-fighter ship.

To control a planet you need a flag marker on it.

So control can of a system can be defined as:

A system can be controlled, if, and only if:
0= space + x planets - space controlled - y planets controlled

Where 'x' is the number of planets in the system and 'y' is the number of planets controlled.

FunkyBunch said:

The only time "0 out of 0" is undefined is when you are doing division. IE, 0 divided by 0 is undefined. But "0" itself doesn't always imply indefinition.

In your equation, if x is 0, and y is 0, the equation is defined just fine:

0 = 1 (space) +0 (planets) - 1 (space controlled) - 0 (planets controlled). You are not dividing by 0, so you are good to go.

If you were writing a program that checked control, you'd probably do something like this:

system_is_controlled = true;
if (! space_controlled) system_is_controlled = false;
for each planet in system_planets
if (! planet.controlled) system_is_controlled = false;
end loop

If there are no system planets, the loop would just be skipped. Thus, while in SOME cases, 0 out of 0 can be "undefined", it's not necessarily the case, it just depends on how you represent it.

I mostly agree =)

I was just trying to be silly though.

FunkyBunch said:

Silliness cannot be tolerated......... because my "silliness vs serious" detector never works

Actually, from someone in his final year of a maths degree, you can prove it mathematically:

Let A = "I control every planet"

Let B = "There is at least one planet that I don't control".

and A <=> ~ B by definition (where ~B is the negation of B).

As he cannot find a single planet tht you do not control, it must be that

B does not hold => ~B holds <=> A holds => you control every planet.

It's referred to as being vacuously true.

Thanks a lot, guys!!

I couldn't agree more with you and I even tried to explain my point of view using this logical method ("think as if someone was programing it..." or "Don't think only on the planets you got the control the system, let's try seeing how many planets are left to control be taken.." and so on.. =P).

Sincerely,

Mauro Draco.