Building

[mskala at ansuz dot sooke dot bc dot ca]

Has anyone actually built something like the "shop" described in section
2.25.3 of the design manual?  I would like to have a unit that builds
other units of the player's choice, instantly, limited by a material, but
only on explicit demand and in the amounts requested.  I'm getting a
variety of bizarre behaviour depending on what settings I use, but the two
main problems seem to be that the shop doesn't actually build units until
the next turn after they're requested, and when it does, it builds as many
of that type as the material allows, draining the material supply
completely.  It also looks like sometimes twice the intended material
price is charged.  Is there an example of a file out there where this
behaviour is used and works?

Issues I'd like to know about include:

* does the "shop" need ACP?  does it need to have acp-independent turned on?
* can I allow it to build in nonadjacent hexes by turning up the
  build-range and undocumented create-range values?
* should I be setting the "creation" values or the "build" values, or both?
* can I make this work with take-from-treasury?
* how do I get it to only build one unit instead of "as many as possible"?
* how do I get it to build them immediately instead of waiting for next turn?
* there are probably bugs in the code, but at this point I'm pretty sure
  I don't even have the GDL correct, so it's hard to say which of my
  problems come from bugs and which are from bad GDL.

-- 
Matthew Skala
mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca                    Embrace and defend.
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/