Re: Bugs in Bellum Aeternum

[Eric McDonald <mcdonald at phy dot cmich dot edu>]

Hi Lincoln,

On Fri, 26 Sep 2003, Lincoln Peters wrote:

> > Yes. Do you think it is too small? It is a 1 in 20 chance, iirc, 
> > and if you bring enough armor for the task, probability is that 
> > the Capitol will fall sooner rather than later....
> 
> It seems fine if that's what you want.  And there isn't anything wrong
> with doing it that way.
> 
> I think that the reason that I was somewhat confused by it was the first
> time I played it, I swarmed a bunch of armors around the capital and
> started pounding.  When that 1 in 20 chance finally came around, the
> game ended quite abruptly (at least it was abrupt in comparison to most
> other games).

But, if the "Stubborn Sides" option is on, then the self-unit 
should get resurrected as any other unit that can be a self-unit 
(capital ships, field HQ's, other capitols which you own, grand 
citadels).

As a side note, I am playing a game where 1 armor was able to 
capture a Capitol after 15 tries.

> > I think these are good ideas. 
> 
> One more thing regarding standing orders and such automation mechanisms:
> I ran into a situation where there was a severe shortage of 'c' at the
> front lines, despite the presence of a Field HQ unit.  It would be nice
> if I could set a condition (perhaps that its supply of 'c' drops below
> 25) under which it would move to a predetermined place (most likely a
> metropolis), resupply 'c', then return to its previous location.
> 
> On the other hand, maybe I'm just not swarming enough Field HQ units to
> keep up with my other swarms.

What is your other unit to Field HQ ratio? And what is the 
admixture of the other units?

When I have playtested, I have generally thought that there was 
still too much command-and-control ('c') floating around, and have 
been contemplating tuning it down even more. But your comment is 
giving me second thoughts about that.

> > But, if you send an Engineers into a Ruins, then the Ruins should 
> > be able to perform a disband action, because the Engineers doubles 
> > (in theory, haven't tested this yet) the Ruins' ACP, thereby 
> > giving it 2 ACP, which should be sufficient to do a disband.
> 
> The only problem I can see there is that the engineers might vanish
> along with the ruins.  Although I haven't tried it.

I also had that concern, which is why I opted to use the 
acp-damage-effect interpolation list, so that when Ruins HP 
reaches 2, then its ACP goes up to 2, thereby allowing it to 
finish itself off. In theory.

I haven't been able to test this, because ever time I issue a 
disband command to a healthy, Engineers-occupied Ruins, Xconq says 
it is going to perform the task and then doesn't. I need to figure 
out if this is a result of something screwy in my module or in 
Xconq.

> What I did in bolodd.g was:
> 
> * Ruins are always independent (they aren't useful for *anything*).
> * They start with 50HP.
> * They lose 1HP per round (as per attrition).
> * They can be attacked and suffer damage comparable to what an attacker
> would inflict on a base (usually 1d6).
> * Engineers, however, inflict 6d6 damage vs. ruins with every blow, and
> so they can clear ruins very quickly.
> * Finally, engineers don't require any ammo to attack ruins.

And I could certainly adopt something like that (it is a good 
idea), if it was not for the fact that Towns become Ruins if you 
destroy them, and so you end up with Ruins that are owned by a 
side.

> > Also, once the Ruins gets down to 2 HP, you should be able to 
> > withdraw the Engineers and let the Ruins finish itself off. 
> > Obviously this is also untested, and there is a higher chance that 
> > this might not work correctly, since I haven't looked at the 
> > interpolation-list code in a while.
> 
> I think it would work, but there is probably an easier way.  See above.

Yeah, what I did was a bit hackish, but I think we are approaching 
the concept of ruins slightly differently, so I am not sure that I 
can adapt what you did.

Just out of curiosity, I see the word "bolo" in "bolodd". Is your 
module a take on the old "Bolo" tank game? In any case, I would 
like to try it out sometime.

> 1. This is probably beyond the current capabilities of Xconq, but it
> would be nice if there was a way to prevent two sides from starting on
> the same continent.  When they do, the game often ends too quickly for
> anyone to build a grand citadel, a fully-loaded fleet carrier, etc.

I could change the terrain generation params to make continents 
that are smaller than the country radii. I think that would solve 
the issue.

Also, I already plan on adding a sea transport to each side's 
initial reportoire of units, so that sides which start out on  
islands will not be as disadvantaged.

> 2. It looks like a name is assigned to every capital, but the only time
> Xconq refers to a capital by name is when it is captured (the rest of
> time it's refered to by coordinates, e.g. "your capital at x,y").  It
> might be useful for Xconq to refer to capitals by name, especially if a
> game has lots of sides and consequently toward the end, a few sides have
> a lot of captured capitals (if nothing else, I could easily find a
> specific capital using the "Find" command).

I can fix that by altering the description-format property for 
Capitols.

  Thanks for the feedback,
    Eric