Re: Jump lines as roads.

[Lincoln Peters <sampln at sbcglobal dot net>]

On Sun, 2004-08-22 at 19:16, Henry J. Cobb wrote:
> There are several games such as Warp War or Imperium that have jump lines
> or warp lines on the map.
> 
> You enter one end of the line and appear at the other end instantly or
> very quickly.

I don't know of any way to make movement cost less than 1 ACP per cell,
although I suppose you could give a jump- or warp-equipped ship lots of
ACP's.  You would then have to counterbalance them in other situations
by requiring them to spend lots of ACP's on anything other than
movement.

> 
> So how about a map with stars as impassable single hexes surrounded by a
> small amount of normal space in which there are planets that do production
> and house troops and fighters.

Such things exist.  See galaxy.g, galaxy2.g, space.g, and space-civ.g. 
I suspect that space-civ.g (which was never finished) comes closest to
what you're describing.

> 
> At the edge of each system is an impassable "scale barrier" cut through
> with jump line roads that have a movement cost of zero or very close to
> it, but these roads are restricted to jump or warp equipped ship classes.

You could make planetary space and deep space different terrain types
entirely.  This is how space.g works.

> 
> Can mplayer handle this and can it be generated with the standard map
> routines?

Look into how it's done in space.g and space-civ.g.  You might also want
to look at the code that's used to generate roads, and possibly the
make-maze-terrain synthesis method (used in cave.g and cave2.g).

Unfortunately, the AI is usually terrible at such games, probably
because it has no concept of how to load armies onto a transport ship
and then move the transport ship so that the armies can attack an enemy
planet.  Perhaps this wouldn't be an issue in your game, depending on
how you were to handle such things.

---
Lincoln Peters
<sampln@sbcglobal.net>

All your people must learn before you can reach for the stars.
		-- Kirk, "The Gamesters of Triskelion", stardate 3259.2