your mother was a hamster

As far as I know, the taunts don't actually DO anything. But I could be wrong.

does Taunt (or versions of taunt) have different results?

Thats good thinking though, my 8 year old nephew and I was playing and he says to me "can I tell him his leader wears combat boots" and I'm like "Sure" so he does and giggled so hard I loved it.

The taunt DOES have an effect. Enemy ships ignore or react to taunts at random. If the taunted ship reacts it will come after the player ship that issued the taunt. This can be very useful in pulling enemies away from a base or neutral ship, or luring them into minefields.

Really? I guess that makes sense, but I not have tried it enough times to notice that. Pretty cool though. Does it have a range limit, or could you theoretically lure enemies from anywhere?

I don't think it has a range limit, though perhaps it should.

There are three different taunts. For each, every ship has a chance to become enraged by that specific taunt. Once a taunt takes effect, it can never be used on that ship again.

Enraged ships drop everything and proceed towards you, no matter how far they are away. This lasts for a couple minutes. If a ship belongs to a fleet, the whole fleet will respond.

As you might imagine, you can use taunts to lure enemies into hazards, or give your stations breathing room, but not indefinitely.

I know of no historical examples of real warships taunting each other. But I do recall two cases of taunts in Star Trek. They were used exactly as Thom describes - - - with a 50% success rate.

In Balance of Terror Kirk orders Uhura to "Make challenge! Warn that ship off!" We don't know what Uhura says to the Romulans. Apparently they don't receive the message.

At a critical moment in The Wrath of Khan Kirk says: "Khan, I'm laughing at the superior intellect." Khan takes the bait and follows the Enterprise into the Mutara Nebula for one of the best space battles ever filmed.

Thanks for all the posts on the subject.
we played with the taunts more and did see the in game effects. i think that the randomness of the reaction was what threw us.
I guess we were expecting the comm's officer to see get some sort of "they do not respond" message. but handn't realized that no response was not an error but an actual choice and the Comms officer needed to play their part saying "no response to our hails".

good idea and glad to see the mechanic works so logically...

We used to pull a fleet through a minefield. It was beautiful!
J

Did I read somewhere a description of each of the aliens that gave some supposed idea that certain taunts might be more useful against certain aliens? ie. Taunting to the Arvonians that their matriarchal leader wears combat boots? (seeing that their culture is matriarchal)

Thanks!

I'd read somewhere (in the 1.70 manual I think) that the taunts do have varying chance of effect by race. So the Kraliens who are fastidious, would be more insulted by a taunt implying they are unclean.

I would also caution that reckless taunting may be a bad thing. If you were fighting one battle, having your Comms officer taunt another fleet behind you would make you an Artemis sandwich. I'd rather that other fleet keep heading to DS2 while I finish the first fleet. I'll get to them when I'm ready.

The Comms officer should not be taunting enemies without the captain's request. It will change enemy behaviors that he was counting on.

Plus, if you can only succeed at taunting once, then a far away fleet that has been taunted will be wasted trying to head for the Artemis while they were already heading for a far away known destination. Later, when the captain really wants to lure them away, he can't because it's been wasted.

The taunt system will be enhanced in Artemis 2.0 to be more canonical and more interactive. Right now it's still in rough beta form, but it will go something like this:

Each race will have its own set of taunts. For example, players will be able to insult the Kralien religion or the Arvonian Royal Family.

Each enemy captain will be immune to one taunt. For example, suppose the players tell Skaraan captain: "Your wife looks like a Space Whale!" but that Skaraan is actually unmarried. In that case the Skaraan captain will just think the players are idiots. Once the captain thinks the players are idiots that ship will never respond to a taunt again.

However, as soon as an enemy ship is identified, the players' Science Officer will be able to see a Naval Intelligence report on its captain. That report will include details like whether the Skaraan captain is unmarried, or the Kralien captain doesn't practice the religion, or the Arvonian captain thinks the Royal Family is a bunch of pompous inbreeds.

So if the Communications officer just starts taunting willy-nilly then he/she will often screw up and make enemy ships taunt proof. But if he/she works closely with the Science Officer then he/she has a good chance of choosing an effective taunt.