Re: Some Qs

[Jim Kingdon <kingdon at panix dot com>]

> Unfortunately, even though I only gave them one hit point, and lowered
> the chances of hitting against other ships, the mplayer uses them as
> light combat ships instead of the destroyers, and this makes the game
> easier.

Yeah, the mplayer isn't very good at figuring out what to build.  If
you took a look at preferred_build_type in kernel/ai.c and figured out
how to improve it, you'd probably also make the mplayer a lot better
at other games too.  Well, or the code which actually uses the units -
might want the ai to make some patrol boats just use them differently.

> Which ai is the best to use for this type of game?

The only "real" ai is mplayer.  oplayer is just an old version of the
mplayer and iplayer is an intentionally simple (dumb) ai if one wants
an AI for the independent units.

> The other problem I have is that there is a unit called satellite
> which is sent of to orbit in a certain direction

Hmm, I'm not sure I can think of a way to do that.

> stays up for fifty turns before being destroyed.

Should be able to do this with a material (set supply-on-creation for
the satellite, provide no other way to get any of that material, set
hp-per-starve).

> It also needs to reveal one more hex than other units.

Set vision-range, for example "(add @ vision-range 3)" in stdunit.g
(included from standard.g).