Re: The Monster has Impunity

[Stan Shebs <shebs at shebs dot cnchost dot com>]

Erik Sigra wrote:
> 
> > The net effect of these three forms is to say that a monster has a 90%
> > chance of hitting a building and causing 1 hp of damage; three such hits
> > destroy the building. A monster's knuckle might occasionally be skinned
> > doing this; a 10% chance of 3/100 hp damage is not usually dangerous, and
> > feels a little more realistic without complicating things for the player.
> 
> This text in the Game Design Manual Tutorial implies that the monster
> can get hurt when attacking buildings. But I destroyed very many
> biuldings withoud ever loosing any hitpoints. Is something wrong?

Yes and no. :-)  Looking at the counterattack code (combat.c:one_attack),
I see that "counterattack" has to be true, which it is by default, and
that the defender has to have at least acp-to-defend action points,
which it won't, because it's inanimate and has no acp.

It looks as though this bug might have been around for awhile,
and it affects the standard game as well - bases never hit back
even though the hit-chance table has specific odds for bases'
counterattacks.  I guess nobody complains when their units *don't*
die in an attack... :-)

This will need a bit of tinkering; while Hans' recently-introduced
acp-independent property would reenable counterattacks by inanimate
units, it has other effects as well.  Thanks for noticing this!

Stan