Re: Thoughts on the standard game

[Stan Shebs <shebs@cygnus.com>]

   Date: Wed, 18 Mar 1998 13:55:39 +0000 (GMT)
   From: Keir Novik <ken21@cam.ac.uk>

   What about keeping the current two-dimensional tables, but adding
   special rules for occupants?  E.g.

    - UnitTypeProperty: `occupant-resupply' T/F
	When true, supplies can always be transferred from a transport to
	its occupants, regardless of in-length and out-length.  Default:
	false.

Seems plausible to me, I'll put it on the projects list.

   However, I think the best solution is to use altitude.  Aircraft should be
   required to have positive altitude, and supply should only be allowed
   between units at the same altitude.

   (table altitude-min
     (aircraft t* 1)
     )
   (table altitude-max
     (aircraft t* 1000)
     )

   I gather this is not yet implemented, as hitting the + and - keys doesn't
   do anything for me (X11). 

This is an area that I started on, but which gets very complicated.
For instance, if an airplane has a altitude-min of 1, does that constrain
the altitude of transports that it would like to enter?  What about
construction or repair?

Getting back to the question at hand, resupply is somewhat abstract in
Xconq - we assume that if one type of unit is allowed to resupply
another, that the units involved will quietly do whatever micro-
movements are required to make it happen.  So if there is to be an
altitude restriction on resupply, then that restriction must itself be
enabled/disabled for a game.  This also seems unduly complicated for
the standard game - after all, this is the same game design that allows
bombers to be airborne longer than it takes to raise an entire army!

   Yes, but a single bomb won't strike *all* the airports and barracks
   simultaneously.  That is my main objection.  I also don't like that it
   matters where you click on the city icon (X11 anyways) -- if you click
   where the occupants would be displayed (if you could see them) then you
   attack the occupants, otherwise you attack the city itself.

That should be fixed.  I'm not sure how - I like the idea of being able
to do "surgical strikes" - but the current behavior is by happenstance
rather than by design.

As for the multiple hits, it seems like the probability of additional
hits could be adjusted downward after each hit, so that you can still
hit the jackpot sometimes, but not usually.  Another possibility is to
have occupant counterattacks, so that attacking a city with 10 armor
means that you have to survive 10 counterattacks in order to get hits
on all the occupants...

							Stan