Re: Bugs in Bellum Aeternum

[Lincoln Peters <sampln at sbcglobal dot net>]

On Fri, 2003-09-26 at 19:37, Eric McDonald wrote: 
> > I think that the reason that I was somewhat confused by it was the first
> > time I played it, I swarmed a bunch of armors around the capital and
> > started pounding.  When that 1 in 20 chance finally came around, the
> > game ended quite abruptly (at least it was abrupt in comparison to most
> > other games).
> 
> But, if the "Stubborn Sides" option is on, then the self-unit 
> should get resurrected as any other unit that can be a self-unit 
> (capital ships, field HQ's, other capitols which you own, grand 
> citadels).
> 
> As a side note, I am playing a game where 1 armor was able to 
> capture a Capitol after 15 tries.

I'd believe that, as long as the Capitol is not properly garrisoned.

> > On the other hand, maybe I'm just not swarming enough Field HQ units to
> > keep up with my other swarms.
> 
> What is your other unit to Field HQ ratio? And what is the 
> admixture of the other units?

I probably had a mixture of 20 cavalry and armor scouring the place with
1 Field HQ in place.  As soon as I found that it wasn't working, I
scrambled another Field HQ to the area as quickly as I could.

> When I have playtested, I have generally thought that there was 
> still too much command-and-control ('c') floating around, and have 
> been contemplating tuning it down even more. But your comment is 
> giving me second thoughts about that.

Well, I'm still learning the game!

> > > But, if you send an Engineers into a Ruins, then the Ruins should 
> > > be able to perform a disband action, because the Engineers doubles 
> > > (in theory, haven't tested this yet) the Ruins' ACP, thereby 
> > > giving it 2 ACP, which should be sufficient to do a disband.
> > 
> > The only problem I can see there is that the engineers might vanish
> > along with the ruins.  Although I haven't tried it.
> 
> I also had that concern, which is why I opted to use the 
> acp-damage-effect interpolation list, so that when Ruins HP 
> reaches 2, then its ACP goes up to 2, thereby allowing it to 
> finish itself off. In theory.

I don't think that anyone has ever used acp-damage-effect to give a unit
more ACP when it is damaged (although it might be appropriate in fantasy
games for beserker warriors and such).  I have often found that, when I
try something that has never been done before, there are a few bugs.

> > What I did in bolodd.g was:
> > 
> > * Ruins are always independent (they aren't useful for *anything*).
> > * They start with 50HP.
> > * They lose 1HP per round (as per attrition).
> > * They can be attacked and suffer damage comparable to what an attacker
> > would inflict on a base (usually 1d6).
> > * Engineers, however, inflict 6d6 damage vs. ruins with every blow, and
> > so they can clear ruins very quickly.
> > * Finally, engineers don't require any ammo to attack ruins.
> 
> And I could certainly adopt something like that (it is a good 
> idea), if it was not for the fact that Towns become Ruins if you 
> destroy them, and so you end up with Ruins that are owned by a 
> side.

You could use a line such as:

(add ruins possible-sides "independent")

I think that panzer.g also does this.

> Just out of curiosity, I see the word "bolo" in "bolodd". Is your 
> module a take on the old "Bolo" tank game? In any case, I would 
> like to try it out sometime.

It is, but just barely.  It combines the idea of a simple tank game with
Dungeons & Dragons-style fantasy elements, such as robotic units that
resemble werewolves, giant spiders, elementals, etc.  And the AI is
absolutely terrible at it (not surprisingly).

I had tried making a game that behaved more like the old "Bolo" tank
game, but it didn't work very well.

> > 1. This is probably beyond the current capabilities of Xconq, but it
> > would be nice if there was a way to prevent two sides from starting on
> > the same continent.  When they do, the game often ends too quickly for
> > anyone to build a grand citadel, a fully-loaded fleet carrier, etc.
> 
> I could change the terrain generation params to make continents 
> that are smaller than the country radii. I think that would solve 
> the issue.

Although there would be fewer towns in the vicinity that could be
captured early on, at least without the aid of transport ships.  Perhaps
it would be appropriate as a variant.

> Also, I already plan on adding a sea transport to each side's 
> initial reportoire of units, so that sides which start out on  
> islands will not be as disadvantaged.

That sounds like a good idea.

> > 2. It looks like a name is assigned to every capital, but the only time
> > Xconq refers to a capital by name is when it is captured (the rest of
> > time it's refered to by coordinates, e.g. "your capital at x,y").  It
> > might be useful for Xconq to refer to capitals by name, especially if a
> > game has lots of sides and consequently toward the end, a few sides have
> > a lot of captured capitals (if nothing else, I could easily find a
> > specific capital using the "Find" command).
> 
> I can fix that by altering the description-format property for 
> Capitols.

That would be great.

> 
>   Thanks for the feedback,
>     Eric