Re: Standard game problems in windows (20031214) version

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

Hi Martin, others,

On Tue, 16 Dec 2003, Martin Fehlhaber wrote:

> The computer players did poorly, but I missed one transport of the last player.
> So he retained score 1. I handed over to the AI to let it finish, but couldn't
> bear to watch it crash my planes in hordes.

The poor handling of aircraft is something that I think has 
appeared in the past 1.5 months. I am tempted to address it with a 
temporary fix, but I am currently waiting for Peter, since he is 
probably in a better position to produce a more proper fix.

> After having entered a flight path, planes keep halting after 
>having spent half
> of their fuel, despite the fact that there is a city waiting for them.

This behavior was present in Xconq prior to the new path 
code. I agree that it is annoying. If you move any unit past its 
SupplyLow threshold, you will see this behavior. Again, I am going 
to wait for Peter to make his move first before trying to do 
anything about it.

There is at least one complication here:
Suppose that a unit's path becomes blocked or its destination 
is captured while it is en route. If we blindly follow the path, 
ignoring the SupplyLow indicators, then we risk losing or 
paralyzing the unit due to overconsumption of supplies. I suppose 
that one could recheck the path for blockage after each move, but 
this might be costly in terms of CPU (it would still be cheaper 
than recomputing the path after each move, I think).

> Have I mentioned yet, that I would love to see patrols implemented?

I think we all would. This is one of the things I intend to look 
into once we have 7.5 released.

> Still a fun game to play...

Thanks. I think so too.

  Regards,
    Eric