Re: New testing game

[Hans Ronne <hronne at pp dot sbbs dot se>]

>* How can a size 9 city consuming 9 units of food (1 per size),
>receiving 9 units from the terrain, and with 20 granaries (each doubling
>food production) and 20 farms (each adding 1 unit of food to production)
>possibly be starving and losing population?!?

Are you sure that all 9 cells are being used? The number of cells that a
city can use depends on its reach. Which defaults to zero. Furthermore, a
reach of one will let you use only 6 + 1 cells. So you need at least a
reach of 2 to use 9 cells.

Another question is if you disabled the "supply" code. It is important to
do that in games with advanced units. Otherwise materials will be siphoned
off elsewhere, which is not what you want.

>* Advanced units seem able to store an infinite amount of material if it
>comes from the terrain, regardless of how much they're supposed to be
>able to store.  In this game, I once found I had a city with a capacity
>of 1,000 units of fuel storing about 1,400 units of fuel.  What's with
>that?

Advanced units currently have no limits on how much material they can
store. The material storage tables apply only to non-advanced units. The
theory was that a city does not have a limited storage space the same way a
ship does. But we could add support for that if necessary.

>* When set up according to the game design manual on the website,
>facilities that are supposed to increase the number of cells used by an
>advanced unit don't seem to work.  Perhaps the manual is wrong?

I hope not. Check out the code in allocate_used_cells in run.c. There is
certainly support for these type of facilities. I don't know that this code
has been tested a lot, though, so there may be bugs in it. You would have
to step through it with a debugger to find out what the problem is.

One limitation is that what is increased is only the maximal number of
cells that can be used. If these cells are free from enemy units and if
they are within the unit's reach. So these facilities will not have any
effect if all available cells already are being used.

>* It looks to me like the effects of facilities
>(occupant-multiply-production, et al.) kick in *before* the facilities
>are completed.  A granary should not affect production until it is
>completed, right?

Indeed. We should test for is_active everywhere where facilities are used.
Reminds me of the discussion we had on this list some time ago when I noted
that the supply code works for incomplete units. I thought this was weird,
but not everyone agreed.

Hans

Hans Ronne

hronne@pp.sbbs.se