playable again with a few problems

[Eric McDonald]

Tom Low-Shang wrote:

> Xconq is playable again and there was much rejoicing! :-) 

:-)

> Thanks
> to all the developers for their efforts, but I must regretfully
> report that there still some problems.

Have no regrets about reporting Xconq bugs.

> 1. The fuel supply low condition is higher than before. Fighters
> run low on fuel at 10 instead of 9 and bombers run low at 21
> instead of 18. Is this new behaviour expected?  Fighters and
> bombers run low on fuel more frequently the other types, so I
> have not seen what happens with other units.

I changed the halfway point calculation to conform to a unit's resupply 
percentage doctrine a few months ago. Perhaps this is causing the 
problem. I will look into it later.

> 2. When a unit's task ends without player intervention, the unit
> status still shows the task even though the unit itself shows it
> is selected, which is a little confusing. Example: A fighter is
> doing a move-direction-multiple task and runs low on fuel.

I think that the task is still there in such cases. Probably the display 
  needs to add "(Suspended)" somewhere in the task description.

> 3. The resupply command does not work if the unit has to move to
> the resupply point first. Because of problem #2 you can see that
> the move to and resupply tasks were setup, but the unit does
> nothing and just reverts to the selected state. If you move the
> unit to the resupply point first, the resupply command works
> correctly.

That sounds odd. I will look into it at some point in the near future.

> 4. Move-direction-multiple is blocked by friendly units. This is
> not new behaviour and I just accepted it before,
> but it suddenly
> occured to me that this is not what I would expect. Is this
> behaviour intentional?

No, it is most definitely not, and I certainly thought it was fixed. In 
my test cases, it did work correctly. You are using recent CVS sources, 
right?

Also, could the blocking friendly unit have been filled to capacity with 
other units?

> 5. This one is definitely strange and problably not even
> reproducible. After canceling the build task in several towns,
> they were unable to build anything again. 

Oh jeez, another create/build bug.... Apparently I fixed 2 bugs and 
created a million new ones.

>They would accept the
> produce command but sometimes they would revert to the selected
> state, and other times the town would appear to start building,
> but the next turn it would be passive again.  

A unit will stop building if it runs out of a material. But, if this was 
with the standard game, I would find it hard to believe that that would 
occur.

In the cases where the unit immediately reverts to the selected state, 
could it be that the unit is filled entirely to capacity with other units?

>Eventually some of
> the towns would build again, except for one which stubbornly
> refused to build anything. I saved the game thinking it might
> tell you something, but the problem disappeared in the reloaded
> game. 

Ugh. Did you get any init warnings about units not being able to be 
placed in a cell when you restored the game?

>Would -D have helped in this case?

Possibly. Every time a task is run, there is diagnostic output (when 
this flag is set). You could attempt a task and then see what messages 
show up on the console window. If nothing shows up, then the problem is 
likely at the UI level and not in the game kernel's task system.

   Thanks for the feedback,
      Eric