1 .TH Server "Empire3 Changes"
2 .NA Empire3 "Changes in Empire 3 (1995-96)"
5 There have been several changes/fixes made to the Empire 2 code in the
6 Empire 3 Server. This outlines the various changes and how
7 they will affect you, the player. Most of these changes were coded by
8 Ken Stevens <children@empire.net>.
13 The delivery and distribution stuff was removed from the output of
14 "commodity" and each column was widened to 5 characters (to accomodate
15 the new system where sectors are now allowed to hold up to 9999 of
18 Mountains will now mine gold at 3/4 the rate that gold mines do (thar's
19 gold 'n them thar hills!)
21 Mountains can now only hold 1/10th the population of normal sectors.
23 The mobility cost to move into a sector has been changed from:
25 cost = (mcost - eff) / 5
28 cost = (2 + (3 - mcost) * eff) / 5
30 cost = (mcost - 20 * eff) / 5
32 OLD SYSTEM: eff 0% 100% NEW SYSTEM: eff 0% 100%
37 Note that this means land units can attack 100% mountains now, so
38 there will be a tradeoff for the defender--either they can have a low
39 efficiency mountain that costs more mobility to attack but gets a
40 lower defense bonus, or they can have a high efficiency mountain that
41 costs less mobility to attack but gets a higher defense bonus.
43 New conditional query "coastal" which gets set when you take a
44 "census" of the sector. Type "cens * ?coast=1" to get a list of all
45 of your sectors which are adjacent to water (and thus vulnerable to
47 .\" -----------------------------------------------------------
51 - The size of "ts1 trade ship 1" was reduced to 100 lcm, 50 hcm, $1500
52 (from 200 lcm, 100 hcm, $2500). Most players were waiting for ts2
53 so this is a nice way to deal with that.
55 .\" -----------------------------------------------------------
59 In the old system, planes would be charged either 10 mobility
60 (interceptors), 12 mobility (escorts) or 20 mobility (the rest) per
61 flight. This cost was then multiplied by (100 / eff) with the
62 restriction that plane mobility could not go below -32. Planes flying
63 missions were charged only 1/4 of this. In the new system, planes are
64 charged a base rate of 5 mobility to prepare for takeoff. On top of
65 this, they are charged a flight cost which is either 10 (interceptors
66 and escorts) or 20 (the rest), however this flight cost is scaled down
67 according to the length of the flight--it is multiplied by (flight
68 length) / (max plane range). The flight cost is then scaled by
69 (100/eff) with the restriction that a plane can't go below -32
70 mobility. Planes flying missions are charged 1/2 of this.
72 The mobility of a plane will now go down by one point for every two
73 points of damage it took from air-to-air combat, to a limit of -32
74 mob. This is to simulate the high mobility cost of air-to-air combat,
75 and the fact that air-to-air combat is more effort for low tech planes.
77 SAM interception is now separate from plane interception; for each
78 attacking plane, if it cost at least $1000 to build, then one SAM will
79 be launched at it. After SAMs have been fired, fighter planes will
80 intercept what's left over.
82 The restriction that high tech nations can not build low tech planes
83 has been removed (the above changes address the f1 SAM-soaking problem).
85 Marine missiles on interdiction now fire at a single ship rather
86 than the whole fleet. They pick the ship which is the most valuable
87 according to (cost to build) * efficiency. Furthermore, marine
88 missiles will only launch at a ship if the ship cost >= $1000 to build
89 or if it can carry land units or planes.
91 Sectors which your planes fly over when they fly missions will now be
94 .\" -----------------------------------------------------------
98 There are three new land units: 'cavalry 2', 'light infantry', and 'aau1'. Here's the basic scheme. The old cavalry are an average
99 between the somewhat weaker cav1 and somewhat stronger cav2.
100 light infantry are half the size of and slightly fastar than inf1's. 'aau1' come at the same tech as Zepplins and let low tech countries
101 try to throw rocks at low tech planes...
103 .\" -----------------------------------------------------------
107 You now have 50 realms.
109 Each country now has two bmaps, their 'working' bmap and their 'true' bmap. The true bmap contains only information put there by the
110 server. The working bmap also contains information put there by the
111 bdes and sharebmap commands. The 'bmap' command usually displays the
112 working bmap unless the player specifies 'bmap <SECTS> true'.
113 If the players working bmap becomes corrupted somehow, then they can
114 type 'bmap <SECTS> revert' to revert their working bmap back to their
115 true bmap. This change was necessary to prevent abuse of the new 'sharebmap' command (which compares the players true bmaps when
116 determining whether they overlap).
118 There is a new command "sharebmap <COUN> <SECTS>". If <COUN>
119 is friendly towards you and your 'true' bmaps already share enough information
120 in common, then your bmap will be added to their bmap. For more details
121 see 'info sharebmap'.
123 .\" -----------------------------------------------------------
127 The new info page "info Mobility" gives the formulas for all
128 mobility costs in the game.
130 .\" -----------------------------------------------------------
134 If someone else was the last person to use your country, then when you
135 login you will get a message like:
137 Last connection from: Mon Nov 13 04:48:04 1995
138 to: Mon Nov 13 05:13:12 1995
139 by: children@RedDragon.Empire.Net
142 If the game is a blitz, then the 'players' command will list other
143 countries which are logged on. This will cut down on the 'is anybody
144 else logged on?' announcements. Note that for players, 'last command'
145 and 'user@hostname' are not printed (only deities get to see this stuff).
147 You can now read old announcements which you've already thrown away by
149 .SY "wire <number of days>"
150 This works much in the same way as news. The server automatically
151 deletes all announcements older than 7 days.
153 New server commands 'toggle sync', 'toggle async', and 'sync' permit
154 client-server database synchronization.
156 Before you type a telegram, you will now see:
158 Enter telegram for Fodderland
159 undo last line with ~u, print with ~p, abort with ~q, end with ^D or .
162 The new tilde escapes work very nicely.
164 .\" -----------------------------------------------------------
169 The following options have been made standard:
170 NEWPAF: Plane combat is in nice easy-to-read columns