1 .TH Server "Empire4 Changes"
2 .NA Empire4 "Changes in Empire 4 (1996-present)"
5 This document outlines the various changes to the game and how they
6 will affect you, the player. These were coded as the Wolfpack project.
8 Changes to Empire 4.3.33 - Wed May 20 18:17:43 UTC 2015
9 * New client option -r for restricted mode. Contributed by Marisa
11 * The add syntax deprecated in 4.3.29 is now gone.
12 * The explore, move, test, transport syntax deprecated in 4.3.27 is
14 * The bmap flag syntax deprecated in 4.3.27 is now gone.
15 * Stricter configuration validation:
16 - Reject odd WORLD_X instead of making it even silently.
18 - Reject missiles that lack capability VTOL instead of adding VTOL
20 - Reject ships that can carry planes, but have neither capability
21 plane nor miss, instead of adding miss silently.
22 * Outlaw ships that can drop depth charges, but not fire. No such
23 ships exist in the stock game. 4.3.31 permitted them, but keeping
24 them working has turned out to be bothersome.
25 * Changes to fire and torpedo:
26 - Don't disclose that the torpedo's path to the target is blocked
27 by land when the target is out of range. Screwed up in 4.2.2.
28 - When a submarine gets hit by return fire after firing its deck
29 gun, the defender again learns the submarine's UID and type, just
30 like for surface ships. This is how it worked before Empire 2.3.
31 - When a submarine gets hit by return fire after launching a
32 torpedo, the defender again learns the submarine's UID. Before
33 Empire 2.3, he learned UID and type.
34 - Print "Kaboom" even when the target is out of range.
35 - Always clear missions when firing guns or dropping depth charges.
36 Screwed up when missions were added in Chainsaw.
37 - Report "Sector X,Y ready to fire" instead of "Sector X,Y firing",
38 because the sector isn't firing, yet, then. Also report ships
39 and land units ready to fire.
40 - Suppress bulletin when player shells or torpedoes his own ship.
41 * When artillery on a bridge span shelled down the supporting bridge
42 head, the bridge fell and the artillery drowned alright. But then
43 the bridge rose right back. Broken in 4.3.14.
44 * Fix board to charge mobility even when defender is less than 100%
45 efficient. Broken in Empire 2.
46 * The convert command charged security land units mobility until
47 4.3.16 broke that. Drop this undocumented feature instead of
49 * Fix news to report the actual owner of ships sunk by return
50 torpedoes instead of POGO. Screwed up when return torpedoes were
52 * Don't disclose UID, type and owner of torpedoed submarines. The
53 latter leaked through the news.
55 - Fix damage to mobility when bombing planes. Has always been
57 - Include position when reporting bombing of a land unit, like we
59 - Suppress bulletin when player bombs his own assets.
60 - Report bombing of plane to owner once, not twice.
61 - Don't permit bombing of dead planes. Missed when we did the same
62 for dead ships and land units in 4.3.16.
63 * Changes to retreat and lretreat:
64 - Be less loquacious when changing orders.
65 - Deprecate pseudo-condition 'c'. Use retreat path 'h' to cancel
67 - Change query syntax from "retreat SHIPS" to "retreat SHIPS q".
68 Consistent with mission, and makes prompting for arguments more
69 usable. Keep accepting the old syntax for now, but deprecate it.
70 - Reject invalid retreat paths instead of silently ignoring invalid
71 characters during retreat. Unfortunately, the path needs to be
72 valid even with deprecated pseudo-condition 'c', where it's not
73 actually used. This might break some existing usage.
74 - Fail without charging BTUs when the player gives no conditions.
75 - Fix infinite loop when third argument contains '?'. Broken in
77 * Rename retreat flag "torped" to "torpedoed" in xdump retreat-flags.
78 This could conceivably break clients. No actual breakage is known.
79 * Rewrite automatic retreat to fix its many bugs and inconsistencies
80 with navigate and march:
81 - When a ship defeats a boarding party, but suffers enough damage
82 to sink, retreat the victim's group (if any) instead of ship#0.
83 - Permit retreat exactly when navigate and march would be
84 permitted. Before, land units happily retreated while on the
85 trading block (forbidden with march since 4.0.9), crewless
86 (likewise since 4.0.0), kidnapped in a foreign sector
87 (inconsistent since land units were added in Chainsaw 3), loaded
88 on a ship (likewise) or a land unit (inconsistent since that
89 became possible in 4.0.0). Ships retreated while on the trading
90 block (forbidden with navigate since 4.0.9).
91 - Land units can now retreat into foreign sectors exactly when they
92 could march there: when the sector is allied, or when the land
93 unit is a spy (with the usual risks).
94 - Land units can now retreat into mountains.
95 - Land unit retreat now resets fortification.
96 - Group retreat now happens only along a single path. Before, you
97 could scatter a group in several directions, and even retreat in
98 far away places. The latter was a highly abusable design flaw.
99 - Bulletins provide more useful information in fewer words. In
100 particular, they always report the end sector.
101 - Fix retreat after a torpedo hit to include the torpedo damage in
102 its mobility cost calculation.
103 - When retreat runs into a sector that cannot be entered, don't
104 consume the retreat direction.
105 - Don't charge mobility for retreating in direction 'h'
106 - You can no longer make your own ships or land units retreat.
107 - Clear mission only when the ship or land unit actually retreats.
108 - Land unit group retreat could corrupt the land unit file or crash
109 the server. Screwed up when Chainsaw added land unit retreat.
110 - Fix ship retreat when helpless. Surface ships claimed to retreat
111 in a bulletin, but that was a lie. Submarines didn't even
113 * Don't tell the player he sunk a ship when it survives an attack
114 with bomb, fire, launch or torpedo, but sinks during retreat. bomb
115 even reported where it had retreated to when it sank.
116 * Land mine fixes, affecting march and, if option INTERDICT_ATT is
117 enabled, attack and assault:
118 - Fix march sub-command 'm' to not let non-engineers hit mines.
119 Broken in Empire 2. Fixed in 4.0.17 for ships only.
120 - Engineers now risk hitting mines twice instead of once on sector
121 entry, just like minesweepers.
122 - No sweeping with zero mobility. Screwed up when Chainsaw added
124 * Navigate and march cleanup and bug hunt:
125 - Stop on non-fatal mine hits, too. Before, we carried on, and
126 ships that lost all crew were left behind only at the next
127 prompt. Note that we already stop on non-fatal interdiction
128 damage since Empire 2.
129 - Fix use-after-free when a flagship or leader stays behind without
130 a prompt following immediately.
131 - When something other than movement charged mobility, the charge
132 was lost on the next movement, unless there was a prompt in
133 between. For instance, mobility lost to mine hits could come
135 - Fix parser not to get confused by white-space.
136 - Make ships use radar always, not just most of the time.
137 - Land units now use radar automatically like ships.
138 - Report flagship and leader changes immediately, and always.
139 Before, they were reported only around a prompt.
140 - Wipe mission and retreat orders less eagerly. Before, they where
141 sometimes wiped even for ships and land units the command
143 - Give up fortification only when a land unit actually moves or
145 - Report where exactly ships and land units sweep mines.
146 - Nicer error messages for sub-command 'm'.
147 - Fix sub-command 'm' not to drop engineers without mobility from
149 - When denying ships entry to an unfriendly sector with canals,
150 don't disclose whether it's above 2%.
151 - Both navigate and march now require all their ships and land
152 units to be in the same sector. Support for scattered ships and
153 land units complicates the code and blows up the test matrix.
154 It's also rather obscure; I suspect accidental use has been more
155 frequent than intentional use.
156 - Check for sector abandonment before anyone marches instead of
157 right before moving the last land unit. Fixes a bug that could
158 scatter the group when something interferes while waiting for the
159 player to confirm abandonment.
160 - When marching a mixed group of spies and non-spies into a
161 non-allied sector, remove non-spies from the group, and move the
162 spies. Before, only the spies before the first non-spy moved
163 into the non-allied sector, which could scatter the group.
164 Screwed up when 4.0.0 added spy units.
165 - Don't permit trains to march out of sectors without rail.
166 - When navigating a mixed group of ships with and without canal
167 capability into a canal, remove incapable ships from the group,
168 and move the capable ships. Before, only the ships before the
169 first incapable ship moved into the canal, which could scatter
170 the group. Broken in 4.3.0.
171 - Fix navigate buffer overrun for impossibly long paths taken. No
172 remotely sane game configuration provides a ship fast enough to
173 trigger it. Broken in 4.0.0.
174 * Remove option SAIL (commands follow, mquota, sail, unsail; ship
175 selectors mquota, path, follow) and autonav (commands order,
176 qorder, sorder; ship selectors xstart, xend, ystart, yend,
177 cargostart, cargoend, amtstart, amtend, autonav) due to multiple
179 - The orders are executed at the update. Crafty players can use
180 them to get around the update window.
181 - Usability is poor, especially for autonav.
182 - Few players use them.
183 - Documentation is inaccurate.
184 - Code has bugs, some of them critical.
185 - It's almost 1300 lines of rather crufty code nobody wants to
187 - Code sharing complicates maintenance of the navigate command.
188 * Configuration tables reader and empdump improvements:
189 - Better error messages.
190 - Export now omits redundant data by default. Use empdump -c to
192 - Import can cope with omitted sectors and realms. Omitted sectors
193 become sea, and omitted realms become empty.
194 - Column order is now unrestricted. Before, some tables required
195 an ID field to come first.
196 - Support splitting any table. Before, tables sect, news, lost,
197 realm, game, infrastructure could not be split.
198 - Support strings longer than 65535 characters.
199 * Fix empdump -i to reject strings that are one character too long.
200 The bug affected ship table columns path, name and rpath, land
201 table column rpath, nat table columns cname, passwd, ip, hostname
203 * Reject nat selectors relations, contacts and rejects, because they
204 don't actually make sense. They exist just for xdump.
205 * Drop the code to resolve player IP address. It's been disabled
206 since 4.2.13. Deprecate nat selector hostname.
207 * Fix bridge spans next to a bridge tower or head taking damage to
208 fall when they should with EASY_BRIDGES off. Has always been
210 * Fix bridge spans next to a collapsing bridge tower to fall when
211 they should with EASY_BRIDGES on. Broken in 4.3.12.
212 * When you scrap a plane, you get crew back only proportionally to
215 - Fail the attempt to build a bridge not next to land or bridge
217 - Deities can now build anywhere, without materials, work or money.
218 - Building a plane no longer uses at least one military. Military
219 for crew are now rounded just like the other materials. The
220 special case dates back to 4.2.3.
221 - Report missing materials more nicely.
222 - You now need the required materials rounded up to be present.
223 Actual use is still randomly rounded. Before, crafty players
224 could exploit the rounding to save materials, or build
225 sufficiently cheap things without materials. In the stock game,
226 linf and many plane types could be built without materials.
227 * Remove option TREATIES. Usability is very poor, virtually nobody
228 uses them, conditions are incomplete, the code is buggy, and a
230 * Test suite improvements:
231 - Coverage extended to commands build, navigate, march, fire,
232 torpedo, retreat, lretreat, falling bridges, automatic retreat,
233 command info page completeness, and the empdump utility program.
234 - Maintainability of tests much improved.
235 - Test harness refactoring.
237 * Adjust stack sizes. Stack overflow was possibly for tiny worlds.
238 * Fix start, stop to not operate on dead units when used by a deity.
239 Screwed up when start, stop were extended to units in 4.3.6.
240 * Nukes can be grouped into stockpiles, just like ships can be
241 grouped into fleets. The new command stockpile does for nukes what
242 fleet does for ships. Likewise the new nuke selector stockpile.
243 * wingadd no longer costs BTUs, for consistency with fleetadd and
246 - Keep missions centered on ship, plane or land unit centered when
247 teleporting it. Screwed up when Chainsaw added missions.
248 - Preserve "does not follow" when copying ships. Preserve "no
249 distribution center" when copying sectors, and don't mess up
250 coastal flag. Screwed when Chainsaw added the means to copy a
252 - You can now edit nukes.
253 - Suppress bulletin on no-op ship, plane, land unit location
254 change. Screwed up in 4.3.32.
255 - You can now edit ship, plane and land unit types.
256 - Changing the owner of a ship, plane or land unit away from POGO
258 * Fix "make uninstall" to remove HTML info pages (which are not
259 installed by default) and directory share/empire/.
260 * Fix "make install" to remove stale formatted info pages.
261 * Code refactoring and cleanup, portability improvements.
262 * Info file fixes and improvements.
264 Changes to Empire 4.3.32 - Sun Aug 25 07:55:34 UTC 2013
265 * Fix an LWP stack overflow observed on AIX 7.1.
266 * Fix portability bug in standalone client Makefile
267 * Fix portability bug in configure test for curses.
268 * The break command now honors new designation of sanctuaries.
269 * Changes to edit, give, setsector, setresource, swapsector:
270 - Generalize edit to multiple objects: accept
271 <SECTS|SHIPS|PLANES|LANDS|NATS> argument instead of just
272 <SECT|SHIP|PLANE|LAND|NAT>. Obsoletes setsector and setresource.
273 - Make interactive "edit c" detect and handle concurrent updates,
275 - Don't reprint edited object when done with it.
276 - Always print a message describing the actual change. Necessary
277 to give the deity a chance to catch unexpected changes, e.g. a
278 player moving away stuff right before a give command, leaving
279 fewer items than the deity intends to take. Existing messages
280 improved, missing ones added.
281 - Consistently send bulletins to the victim / beneficiary of deity
282 meddling, except when changing stuff mortals can't see.
283 - Report much more deity meddling in the news (subject to option
285 - More robust argument checking. Before, careless deity edits
286 could cause internal errors. Much bounds checking was missing,
287 inconsistent or wrong.
288 - Teleport planes and land units to carrier on load.
289 - Refuse to move planes and land units on carriers.
290 - Fix stack smash in edit l key 'L' that can mess up sector file.
291 - Fix setsector to again print actual landmine change for occupied
292 sectors. Broken in 4.3.31.
293 - Suppress bulletins for acts of god to himself.
294 - Suppress news for acts of god to gods.
295 - Suppress news and bulletins on no-op acts of god.
296 - Always send bulletins from POGO. Name the meddling deity in the
297 bulletin text instead. Inconsistent since Chainsaw.
298 - Make interactive edit accept empty key argument again.
299 - Make interactive edit treat blank input like empty input.
300 - Don't let edit put a land unit or plane on two carriers
301 - Do not disclose when a deity destroys a ship, tell the ex-owner
302 only that he lost it.
303 - edit p and u now show the edited unit like edit s.
304 - edit s now shows the edited ship even when its owner is invalid.
305 * Clean up output of satellite, land, sorder and mission for world
306 sizes between 200 and 1998. cutoff and level still have issues
308 * Plug harmless file descriptor leak on OpenBSD with IPv6. Broken in
310 * New doc/contributing explains how to contribute to Empire.
311 * Code refactoring and cleanup.
312 * Info page, manual page and documentation fixes and clarifications.
314 Changes to Empire 4.3.31 - Sun May 12 16:58:34 UTC 2013
315 * Fix read beyond end of conditional argument on missing operand.
316 * Don't put broken links into info pages formatted as HTML.
317 * Permit ships that can drop depth charges, but not fire. No such
318 ships exist in the stock game.
319 * Consistently require guns for dropping depth charges. Before, only
320 the fire command required guns (since 4.3.12 and before 4.0.6).
321 * Change econfig key rollover_avail_max from 0 to 50.
322 * Make sector production more predictable. Commands production and
323 budget are now a bit more accurate.
324 * Fix bugs that messed up xdump lost and xdump trade on big endian
325 hosts (broken in 4.3.8), and made the server fail during startup on
326 most big endian hosts (broken in 4.3.12).
327 * Build process robustness fixes.
328 * Use "Level: Obsolete" to mark obsolete info pages, and drop "info
330 * Server now uses IPv4 format for IPv4-mapped addresses. Simplifies
331 safe use of econfig key privip.
332 * Server logs a few more network connection details.
333 * Fixes and workarounds for econfig key listen_addr "" (which is the
334 default) when the system has both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses
336 - Server accepted only IPv6 connections on Windows and BSDs. Fix
337 to accept IPv4 ones, too.
338 - Except for OpenBSD, where the fix doesn't work. Accept IPv4
339 connections instead of IPv6 ones there, and document how to get
340 IPv6 accepted instead.
341 - Linux systems are frequently configured in a way that makes the
342 server accept only IPv4 connections. Document workaround: use
344 * Change fairland island size probability distribution: roll two dice
345 instead of one. This makes extreme sizes much less likely.
346 * Make fairland record the island number in the deity territory.
347 * Fix extension of market bidding time when high bidder changes.
348 Introduced broken in 4.0.7, with insufficient fixes in 4.0.9 and
350 * Fix market not to mess up ridiculously high unit prices. Has been
351 broken since 4.0.0 introduced the market.
352 * Fix melting of big piles of stuff by ridiculously heavy fallout.
353 Has been broken since fallout exists.
354 * Fix crash on edit s, p, u key 'U' with negative argument.
355 * When a deity builds ships or land units in foreign sectors, they're
356 given to the sector owner. This lets POGO build them, and it's how
357 build works for planes and nukes.
358 * Fix PRNG (pseudo-random number generator) seeding to resist
359 guessing: seed with a kernel random number. If we can't get one,
360 fall back to a hash of high-resolution time and process ID. This
361 should happen only on old systems or Windows. Far worse than a
362 kernel random number, but far better than just low-resolution time.
363 Fairland's seeding used to be low-resolution time and process ID,
364 but regressed in 4.2.20 to just time.
365 * Switch PRNG from BSD random() to Mersenne Twister. This is a is a
366 proven, high-quality PRNG.
367 * Fix tiny error in distribution of some die rolls.
368 * Increase land unit retreat chance and nuclear damage's chance to
369 destroy a nuke by one percentage point, for simplicity.
370 * Merge news items a bit more aggressively.
371 * Fix a year 2038 bug in news item merging.
372 * Retire the nightly build.
373 * New make target check. Just a few tests for now, derived from the
374 smoke test that used to be part of the nightly build.
375 * Really fix accepting connections from "long" IPv6 address. The fix
376 in 4.3.23 could mess up player's host address in player output and
377 logs, and cause extra "Last connection" messages.
378 * Take ship cost into account when picking missile interdiction
379 target. Broken in 4.3.8.
380 * Really fix give, setsector and setresource not to wipe out
381 concurrent updates. The fix in 4.3.27 was insufficient.
382 * Fix setsector not to disclose number of landmines to occupier.
383 * Make capital fail more nicely when the sector is unsuitable. Its
384 argument must now be a single sector. Before, it silently picked
385 the first suitable one when the argument selected several. Has
386 always been that way, and never documented.
387 * Changes to option GODNEWS:
388 - Deity command give could downgrade the deity's relations to the
389 sector owner when GODNEWS was enabled. No more.
390 - Likewise, deity commands edit and setsector can no longer
391 downgrade the victim's relations to the deity.
392 - News enabled by GODNEWS no longer affect news headlines.
393 * Fix bomb, drop, fly, paradrop, recon and sweep to again accept a
394 destination sector equal to the assembly point. Broken in 4.3.27.
395 * Fix portability bug in configure test for Windows API.
396 * More user friendly server startup: journal open errors are detected
397 while the server still runs in the foreground, which makes it
398 possible to complain to stderr and to exit unsuccessfully.
400 - Forbid selling conquered populace. Only relevant when the deity
401 allows selling civilians, which is probably a bad idea.
402 - Permit selling military by default.
403 - Forbid selling ships and land units carrying unsalable cargo.
404 * Scrapping ships and land units now spreads the plague
405 * Don't let scrap give away civilians, kill them off instead.
406 * Pilots and air cargo now spread the plague.
407 * Don't let fly and drop give away civilians.
408 * Fix fly to permit flying civs to a carrier in an occupied sector.
410 * Don't let planes fly to a carrier without sufficient space.
411 Before, planes that didn't fit were teleported home, which could be
412 abused. Broken in 4.3.17. Almost the same bug was previously
414 * Fix tend to foreign ships:
415 - Refuse to tend civilians to foreign ships.
416 - Don't leak friendly foreign ships' commodity cargo.
417 - Continue with remaining target ships after skipping a foreign one
418 when tending a negative amount of commodities.
419 All broken when Chainsaw 2 added tending to allies.
420 * march sub-command 'm' can now sweep own landmines.
421 * Land units no longer sweep allied landmines, except when executing
422 march sub-command 'm'. They don't hit them since 4.3.27. Sweeping
424 * Fix bmap commands not to parse empty flags argument as "revert".
426 * Code refactoring and cleanup.
427 * Info page fixes and clarifications.
429 Changes to Empire 4.3.30 - Tue May 22 18:34:52 UTC 2012
430 * Disable damage to base sector or ship when missile explodes on
431 launch for now, because damage done to other missiles there can be
432 wiped out in some cases. Broken in Empire 2.
433 * Fix navigate and march not to wipe out concurrent updates.
434 Abusable, but probably not worthwhile.
435 * Fix some buffer overruns in fairland. Has always been broken.
436 * Fix arm to require nuke and plane to be in the same sector. A
437 remote nuke got teleported to its plane when the plane moved.
439 * Change login command kill (used by client option -k) to kill less
440 ruthlessly: send a flash message and try to flush output, exactly
441 like a server shutdown does.
442 * Fix server shutdown to wait for player threads to reach a safe
443 state. Before, player threads raced with shutdown, and failed to
444 update the treasury, record play time, and write log entries when
445 they lost. Bug goes back to Empire 2. Patched partially or
446 unsuccessfully in 4.2.10, 4.2.12, 4.2.20, 4.3.6, 4.3.10 and 4.3.23.
447 The race was hard to lose in practice, until an unrelated
448 "simplification" in 4.3.23 could get player threads stuck sending
449 output after shutdown aborted a command.
450 * Idle timeout changes:
451 - The grace period for clients to complete login and logout is now
452 separate from the idle timeout. Configurable with new econfig
453 key login_grace_time, default is 120 seconds.
454 - The idle timeout for visitors is now separate from the one for
455 players. Configurable with new econfig key max_idle_visitor,
456 default is five minutes.
457 - Fix the idle timeout when the connection gets stuck sending
458 output. Broken in 4.3.20.
459 - Idle timeout during execute now terminates the connection, not
460 just the execute command.
461 * Fix stack smash in build. Remote hole! Broken when Empire 2 added
462 the confirmation prompt.
463 * Fix stack smash in scrap and scuttle. Remote hole! Broken when
464 Chainsaw added the confirmation prompt. Additionally, the
465 confirmation prompt is misleading when the player supplies
466 conditionals. Redesign the flawed prompt.
467 * Fix execute's echo of the command. Broken in 4.3.28.
468 * The mobility cost of retreating a defending land unit was
469 calculated for an uninitialized sector. This could charge
470 incorrect mobility, prevent retreat, or, if the stars align just
471 right, crash the server. Broken in 4.3.6.
472 * Commands cutoff, headlines, land, lstat, motd, neweff, payoff,
473 qorder, sorder, and wall now behave like the other information
474 query commands when the player's connection can't take more output:
475 they pause to let other code run.
476 * Revised command permissions:
477 - arm and disarm no longer require money, for consistency with the
478 other commands to move stuff around.
479 - satellite no longer requires money, for consistency with lookout,
480 radar, sonar and skywatch.
481 - qorder, sorder, survey and test no longer require a capital, for
482 consistency with the other commands that report on stuff the
484 - start and stop no longer require a capital, for consistency with
485 the other commands to control production.
486 - fortify now requires a capital, for consistency with mission,
488 - Anybody may now use country, echo and financial.
489 - Visitors can no longer use census, commodity, map, nmap,
490 sinfrastructure (useless without sectors), read (visitors don't
491 get any telegrams), and change (always failed).
492 - Players can no longer use map and nmap before break. This is
493 consistent with all the other commands to examine the
494 environment. It also prevents people from trying multiple
495 unbroken countries in a blitz to find the one with the nicest
497 - Players can now use resource before break, just like census.
498 * read could swallow the first telegram header when showing the
499 telegrams that arrived while waiting for the player to confirm
500 deletion. Broken in 4.3.29.
501 * Fix 'm' in path argument of explore, move, transport:
502 - Don't moan about deprecated argument syntax ('m' without a space
503 before its argument) even when there's no argument.
504 - Recognize the flags argument again.
507 - Command market is no longer available to visitors, because it
508 triggers execution of trades that have become ready.
509 - Fix a race condition that could cause commodity trades to be
510 executed multiple times. Abusing this to duplicate commodities
511 seems tricky, but possible. Broken in Empire 3.
512 - Don't expropriate sellers of units. POGO got the the money, the
513 telegrams and made the news, the seller got nothing. Broken in
515 * Login command quit and server shutdown could lose player output.
516 4.3.23 tried to fix the shutdown case, but the fix was incomplete.
517 * Fix login command quit to really quit. It sometimes just swallowed
518 buffered input, at least on some systems.
519 * 4.2.22's fairer command scheduling failed to cover the execute
521 * When a client shuts down input transmission to log out, output
522 could get lost. Our client never does that.
523 * Don't skip post command treasury update and status notification on
524 EOF from player, after quit command, and when command is aborted by
525 server shutdown. An unluckily timed EOF or shutdown can deprive a
526 player of money gained from scuttling tradeships or sacking a
527 capital. Can be abused to build bridges and infrastructure free of
528 charge. Can also be abused to designate sectors for free, but the
529 stock game's sector types are all free anyway. Has always been
531 * Fix client not to send an empty line on player interrupt (normally
532 ^C) before the first command. This was missed in 4.3.26.
533 * Code and info page cleanup.
534 * Documentation fixes.
536 Changes to Empire 4.3.29 - Fri Jan 20 19:20:20 UTC 2012
537 * drop and fly from carrier could fail to load last civilian or
539 * Telegram and announcement changes:
540 - wire no longer loops to show announcements that arrived while
541 waiting for the player to confirm deletion.
542 - At most five seconds worth of messages are now squashed together
543 into one. Before, only the time between adjacent telegrams was
544 limited, not the total time.
545 - When telegrams arrived while read was waiting for the player to
546 confirm deletion, and we then showed them, we nevertheless
547 claimed "you have new telegrams" before the next command prompt.
548 Only with toggle inform off. Known bug since Empire 2.
549 - Fix read not to clobber asynchronous notification of telegrams
550 arriving while waiting for the player to confirm deletion.
551 - Fix wire not to reset number of pending telegrams with toggle
552 inform on. Broken when Empire 2 introduced toggle inform.
553 - The number of pending announcements was off when announcements
554 were squashed together.
555 - More careful error handling and logging.
556 * Ensure all of an update's output goes into a single production
558 - Avoid splitting it up when the update is slow. Empire 2 already
559 did that for the number of pending telegrams, but not for read.
560 - Don't turn parts of it into BULLETINs. Autonav and sail could do
562 * files now creates POGO with user interface flags beep, coastwatch,
563 sonar and techlists set, for consistency with add.
564 * Change newcap back to not wiping the country (it wiped since
565 4.3.12). Additionally, leave levels and telegrams alone.
566 * Changes to deity command add:
567 - Require confirmation for unadvisable actions.
568 - Refuse to touch a country while it's being played.
569 - Don't crash on negative country number.
570 - Create deities with money, just like files creates POGO.
571 - Always reset the country completely, not just when adding a
573 - Rename argument "new" to "player". Keep recognizing "new" for
574 now, but deprecate it.
575 - Drop argument "active". If you really want to create a player
576 country without a capital, add the player country normally, then
577 activate it with edit instead of newcap.
578 - Drop the obscure sector check and wipe option. If you really
579 need to wipe out a country, there's much more to wipe than just
581 - Drop the undocumented land unit destruction feature.
582 * Permit no-op country name change again. Accidentally outlawed in
584 * Plug a few minor memory and file descriptor leaks.
585 * Fix use-after-free when plane gets shot down or aborted in
586 dogfight. Broken in 4.3.27.
588 * Info page and manual page fixes.
590 Changes to Empire 4.3.28 - Sat Jul 16 11:30:53 UTC 2011
591 * Don't let POGO (#0) navigate dead ships, and march dead land units.
592 The ghosts even got sighted and interdicted, and could hit mines.
593 Has always been that way.
594 * llook can't see land units and planes loaded on land units anymore.
595 * Fix board to ignore land units loaded on land units when testing
596 whether a sector can board. Broken in 4.0.17.
597 * Fix transport to reject planes loaded on land units. The plane
598 remained on its carrier. When the land unit moved, the plane was
599 teleported right back to it. Broken since Chainsaw 3 added land
601 * Fix lradar not to let land units loaded on land units use radar.
602 Broken since 4.0.0 added trains.
603 * Fix strength to ignore land units loaded on land units. Broken in
605 * Fix navigate and march to find paths longer than a few sectors
606 again (7 for 64 bit hosts, 3 for 32 bit hosts). Broken in 4.3.27.
607 * march sub-command 'i' now shows number of military and land units
609 * New server option -F to force start even when state looks bad.
610 Risks crashes and further corruption, but gives deities a chance to
611 fix up a bad game state with edit commands and such.
612 * empdump -x no longer refuses to export game state that looks bad.
613 Gives deities another tool to fix up a bad game state.
614 * Land units loaded on land units fight che again, as they used to
616 * When a land unit dies fighting che, land units loaded on it get
617 unloaded, and planes loaded on it die. Before, the update left
618 them stuck on their dead carrier. Impact like the next item.
619 Abusable. Broken since Chainsaw 3 added land units.
620 * The update no longer destroys ships, planes and land units for lack
621 of maintenance. Before, it left any embarked planes, land units
622 and nukes on their dead carrier. In this state, units behaved as
623 if their carrier was still alive, with additional protection from
624 the fact that a dead carrier can't be damaged or boarded. If
625 another unit with the same number got built, it picked up the stuck
626 cargo. The cargo got teleported to its new carrier when the
627 carrier moved. Abusable, but it involves going broke, so it's
628 rarely practical. Slightly more practical before 4.3.6 removed
629 budget priorities. Broken for ships and land units when Empire 2
630 added their maintenance cost, and for planes when 4.3.3 replaced
631 nuclear stockpiles by nuke units.
632 * Fix bogus internal error triggered by navigate and march
633 sub-commands 'r', 'l' and 's'. Broken in 4.3.27.
634 * Fix client not to reject redirections and execute containing
635 non-ASCII characters with a bogus scary warning when using UTF-8.
636 * Fix execute not to mangle non-ASCII characters in the argument when
637 prompting for it while login option utf-8 is on.
638 * Fix handling of non-ASCII and control characters in batch files.
639 * Conversion from UTF-8 to ASCII ate the character following a
640 replaced non-ASCII character. Buffer overrun possible if the
641 terminating zero gets eaten. Could happen in players, read, flash,
643 * Fix handling of empty commands:
644 - Time used was not updated.
645 - Mortal player wasn't logged off for game hours, game down, and
647 - Notifications were delayed: going broke, becoming solvent, new
648 telegrams (toggle inform off only), new announcements, capital
650 * Minor tweaks to nightly build.
651 * Server's and empdump's sanity checking of configuration and game
652 state is now more rigorous.
653 * Deity xdump no longer dumps unused countries' realms.
654 * Remove option LANDSPIES. Deities can customize the land table to
656 * Remove option TRADESHIPS. Deities can customize the ship table to
658 * Configuration table changes (builtin and custom):
659 - Rows must be in ascending UID order.
660 - Omitting rows in tables item, sect-chr and infrastructure is no
662 - Custom tables now replace the builtin table completely. Before,
663 omitted rows defaulted to the builtin version, except at the end
664 of a table. Commenting out unwanted stuff just works now.
665 - Permit custom table product having fewer than 14 entries.
666 - Reject custom tables where customization has no effect (updates,
667 table, meta, all symbol tables) or where it's unsafe (news-chr).
668 - Input is checked more rigorously.
670 - Don't touch plane file when import fails.
671 - Refuse import of incorrectly sized table instead of silently
672 creating one the server will reject.
673 - Replace old state completely. Before, omitted rows in the dump
674 defaulted to the old state, except at the end of a table.
675 - Input is checked more rigorously.
676 * Fix xdump updates not to dump bogus extra updates.
677 * Fix use-after-free when a plane got shot down or aborted by flak.
679 * Friendlier diagnostics in the build command.
680 * Fix build to set nuke's tech exactly like for ships, planes and
681 land units. It's not currently used for anything.
682 * Research required for nukes was slightly off sometimes due to
684 * Bridge building required 0.005 tech less than advertised, fix.
685 * "show nuke" now obeys toggle techlists.
686 * Fix "show land s" to show columns xpl and lnd again. Broken in
688 * Code refactoring and cleanup.
689 * Documentation on custom tables and xdump updated.
692 Changes to Empire 4.3.27 - Sun Apr 17 11:36:29 UTC 2011
693 * License upgrade to GPL version 3 or later.
694 * Fix buy not to wipe out concurrent updates. Can be abused to
695 duplicate commodities.
696 * Don't let fighters, SAMs and ABMs intercept while on trading block.
697 * Don't let missiles interdict ships or land units while on trading
699 * Fix client to log long input lines untruncated.
700 * Fix client crash for long input lines.
701 * info subject pages now mark unusually long pages with a !.
702 * The edit command keys deprecated in 4.3.15, 4.3.17 and 4.3.20 are
704 * Fix give, setsector and setres not to wipe out concurrent updates.
705 * Fix explore, move, test, transport not to ignore spaces in path
706 arguments. Broken in 4.3.7. Deprecate use of 'm' without space
708 * Improvements to map drawing commands:
709 - Don't fail silently when asked to draw a map around an invalid
710 unit, explain the problem.
711 - Deprecate bmap flag "r". Use (a prefix of) "revert" instead.
712 - bmap flags following "t" are no longer ignored. However, info
713 pages previously documented an argument "true" in addition to
714 flag "t". To keep that working, keep ignoring flags following
715 "t" when they're bad. But deprecate that usage.
716 - Reverting the bmap no longer draws a map.
717 - Bad conditionals could make the commands misinterpret their first
719 - The commands now fail when they reject their second argument.
720 * The xdump syntax deprecated in 4.3.12 is now gone.
721 * Fix satellite to fail on bad conditionals instead of ignoring them.
722 * Journal improvements:
723 - Optional logging of output.
724 - Long lines are no longer truncated.
725 - Login phase input is now logged, too.
726 - Commands are now logged. Allows making sense of input without
728 * Option BRIDGETOWERS is now disabled by default.
729 * Bridge towers now take 300 hcms to build, down from 400.
730 * Fix stop orders to expire even when the country is broke. Broken
732 * Fix march and navigate not to advise on "legal directions" when
735 - Much faster, especially for distribution, i.e. where it matters
736 most. Speedups in excess of 30x have been observed for updates
737 taken from real games.
738 - Old land path finder leaked memory occasionally.
739 - Old land path finder overran buffers for very long paths. A
740 malicious player can arrange sufficiently long paths, but it
741 takes a lot of land. Distribution, the distribute command, land
742 unit reaction, and automatic supply now handle arbitrary long
743 paths. Commands explore, move, test, transport, march, navigate
744 and path now handle paths up to 1023 characters. Command
745 bestpath shows paths longer than 1023 characters with the tail
747 - Old sea and air path finder treated destinations as unreachable
748 when the best path was longer than 99 characters. Command sorder
749 now handles arbitrary long paths. Commands bomb, drop, fly,
750 paradrop, recon, sweep and sail now handle paths up to 1023
751 characters. Autonav considers up to 1023 characters at the
752 update. Planes can fly missions up to 1023 sectors from their
754 * Automatic supply charged mobility for the path back to the source
755 instead forward to the sink.
756 * Make bestpath work for deities in foreign land.
757 * More robust savecore example script.
758 * Fix buffer overruns in the lookout, spy, map and nmap commands when
759 WORLD_X * WORLD_Y is not a multiple of 16.
760 * The path command's maps weren't always fitted to the path
761 correctly. Broken in 4.3.17.
762 * Land units no longer hit allied mines.
763 * Change sharebmap with yourself to do nothing instead of telling you
764 you're not friendly to yourself.
765 * You can now flash yourself. Enjoy!
766 * A race condition could make the flash command claim an ally was not
767 logged on when he was. Hard to trigger outside the lab.
768 * The flash command no longer prints "Flash sent" for deities. It's
769 annoying. It never did that for mortals.
770 * Plug memory leaks in mission code on a number of conditions:
771 - Submarines moving where own planes would interdict hostile
773 - Ground combat where countries hostile to one of the parties would
774 support if relations were right (allied to one party, at war with
776 - Ships or land units moving within hostile missile mission op
778 - Any player action within marine missile mission op areas that
779 could trigger the missile owners' missions.
781 - When you ordered a sector to attack with military, but lost the
782 sector before the attack was executed, and the new owner was
783 allied to you, the server got confused: it let the military
784 attack even though they were already dead, but not occupy.
785 - When you ordered a land unit to attack from an allied sector, and
786 the sector got lost before the attack was executed, the server
787 reported things as if you had owned the sector yourself. The
788 land unit still attacked when the new owner was also allied to
790 - When a land unit attacked out of an allied sector, its mobility
791 cost was computed as if the ally owned the land unit. Attacking
792 sectors old-owned by that ally was too cheap, and taking back
793 one's own was too expensive.
794 * Fix trade ships to pay off in own harbor. Broken in 4.3.17.
795 * Remove option SLOW_WAR. It hasn't been enabled in a public game
796 for years, and the code implementing it was buggy.
797 * Fix a bug in sail that limited the sail path to 27 instead of the
798 intended 28 characters.
799 * Fix race condition in transmission of flash and telegram
800 information messages that could double output and possibly crash
802 * Planes get to sweep and sonar only after flak and interception.
803 * Don't limit the radar command's range to fit its output into a
804 world map without clipping. The limiting goes back to Chainsaw 2.
805 * Make flak vs. pinpoint bombing consistent with ordinary flak:
806 - 4.3.6 reduced the plane abort chance on damage, but missed the
807 additional flak vs. pinpoint bombing. Fix that.
808 - Fix to charge mobility appropriate for damage.
809 * Prettier flak damage reporting.
810 * Fix bugs that could cause bmap updates from recon and satellite to
812 * Fix lookout to properly report sector ownership to deities.
813 * Suppress bogus messages deities with non-zero country number got
814 when attempting to navigate foreign ships or march foreign land
815 units. Such deity use hasn't worked since Empire 2.
816 * Deities can no longer fly foreign planes. It didn't fully work
817 since Chainsaw 3, and can trigger internal errors since 4.3.11.
818 * Don't split lines over several bulletins. The read command
819 normally merges these bulletins, but if they are more than five
820 seconds apart (clock jumped somehow), we get a bulletin header in
821 the middle of a line. Broken since Empire 2.
822 * Don't beep when plane, land unit or nuke die on a collapsing
823 bridge. Not nice, because it could beep many times, and could put
824 beeps in bulletins. Beeping was added in 4.0.18.
825 * Minor improvements to nuclear damage reporting.
826 * When a deity dropped a foreign nuke, parts of the output went to
827 the owner of the nuke instead of the deity.
828 * When a player triggered a foreign missile launch (mission or
829 interception), and the missile exploded on launch, part of the
830 report went to the player instead of the missile owner. This
831 disclosed the missile owner's origin. Broken in Empire 2.
832 * When autonav reported to a ship owner that it can't load or unload
833 foreign civilians, it used the sector owner's coordinate system.
834 This disclosed the sector owner's origin. Abusable.
835 * When nuclear damage bounced off a sanctuary, the bulletin to the
836 sanctuary owner used the attacker's coordinate system. This
837 disclosed the attacker's origin.
838 * When a deity used sweep, lmine, sail or sabotage with a foreign
839 plane, land unit or ship, its location was reported in the foreign
841 * When a deity asked for a foreign nation report, the capital
842 location was reported in the foreign coordinate system.
843 * Code refactoring and cleanup.
844 * Info file improvements.
846 Changes to Empire 4.3.26 - Mon May 24 16:37:40 UTC 2010
847 * Land units loaded on ships or land units can no longer fight che.
848 * When foreign land units were present, a che revolt could damage
849 them instead of the defending land units. This could let defenders
850 survive the revolt. They were captured or blown up if che took
852 * Fix che revolt to damage only land units that actually fight
853 * Fix loading x-light missiles on ships without capability plane.
854 These ships could only use their x-light slots for x-light planes,
855 not their plane slots. Broken in 4.3.17.
856 * Update bmap when nuclear detonation makes wasteland.
857 * Fix fly and drop to report discarded cargo items correctly.
858 * New client option -s to specify server host and port.
859 * Hitting landmines could crash the server. When not, the damage
860 reduction for capability engineer was applied unpredictably.
862 * Fix retreat and lretreat condition 'c'. Broken in 4.3.16.
863 * coastwatch and skywatch could see too far. Up to one sector for
864 practical radar ranges.
865 * skywatch now reports satellite UIDs. The UID is required for
866 launching a-sats since 4.3.23.
867 * Fix client not to send an empty line of input before aborting the
868 command on player interrupt (normally ^C).
869 * Fix sabotage not to kill the spy every time. Broken in 4.3.17.
871 * Info page fixes, manual page improvements.
873 Changes to Empire 4.3.25 - Sun Mar 21 08:27:37 UTC 2010
874 * Hitting sea mines could crash the server. When not, the damage
875 reduction for capability sweep was applied unpredictably. Broken
877 * When an interdiction did damage other than collateral damage, the
878 planes that intercepted it from interdicted carriers used no
879 petrol. 4.3.24 fixed only the "no damage" case.
880 * Ship anti-missile defense failed to charge shells when the ship was
881 interdicted. The fix in 4.3.24 covered only launch.
882 * Fix a bug in navigate and march that let players lay mines free of
883 charge. Also fix them not to prompt for the number of mines.
884 * Missile exploding on launch could not damage its base if it was
885 armed with a nuke. Broken in 4.3.23.
886 * When a torpedo attack triggered a return torpedo, the news reported
887 it to be fired by the attacker instead of the defender.
888 * Interdiction attacked submarines with surface-only weapons. Broken
890 * Fix a bug in lradar, path, radar, route, satellite, sect and survey
891 that could leak maps to other players. Broken in 4.2.0. Fixed in
892 4.2.8 for bmap, lbmap, lmap, map, nmap, pbmap, pmap, sbmap and smap
894 * files could clobber the game when reading confirmation fails.
895 * fairland no longer rejects small worlds without trying.
897 Changes to Empire 4.3.24 - Tue Jan 26 21:29:14 UTC 2010
898 * The client sometimes hung under Windows when the server closed the
899 connection. Broken in 4.3.23.
900 * Fix navigate and march not to crash the server when a path argument
901 consists of a valid path plus whitespace. Broken in 4.3.7.
902 * When a client sent a blank line in the login phase, the server
903 crashed on some systems.
904 * Fix crash bug in bomb, drop, fly, paradrop, recon and sail. Broken
906 * Fix bogus internal error on escort, recon, and satellite launch.
907 Mostly harmless, as error recovery worked fine. Broken in 4.3.23.
908 * Stop ship and land unit movement on interdiction even when it does
910 * When an interdiction did no or only collateral damage, the planes
911 that intercepted it from interdicted carriers used no petrol, and
912 interdicted land units were immune to collateral damage.
913 * The limit for the number of sectors, ships, planes, land units,
914 nukes, and so forth is now large enough not to matter. It used to
915 be 32768 on common machines. The sector limit was introduced in
916 4.3.12. World x- and y-size are still limited to 65536 on common
918 * News use much less space, and thus I/O. Space was wasted in
919 4.3.12. Side effects of the change:
920 - Expiry of old news no longer updates news timestamps. Updating
921 timestamps was wrong, because it defeated incremental xdump news.
922 - The empdump utility can no longer update timestamps of imported
923 news. Unfortunate, as it breaks incremental xdump news.
924 * New news selector duration, the time span covered by this news item
926 * ABMs failed to charge supplies when their sector was the
927 intercepted missile's target. The stock game's ABMs use no
929 * Ship anti-missile defense failed to charge shells when the ship was
930 the missile's target.
931 * Code refactoring and cleanup.
933 Changes to Empire 4.3.23 - Sun Dec 13 16:34:49 UTC 2009
934 * Fix missile interception not to intercept tactical and marine
935 missiles attacking missiles or satellites. No such missiles exist
936 in the stock game. Interception of tactical ABMs could crash the
937 server. Broken in Empire 2.
938 * Missiles missing their target do collateral damage again. Was
939 disabled because of bugs in 4.0.18 for manual launch and in 4.3.16
940 for automatic launch.
941 * News reported victim as actor for sub-launched anti-sat and ABM.
942 * Defense value of missiles vs. ABMs and satellites vs. anti-sats
943 failed to improve with tech.
944 * Fix a bug that let missiles interdict ships outside their op area.
945 This could happen when a group navigating together was partly
947 * Only bomb strategic and launch at sector can use nukes. Before,
948 they could also be used by missions, bomb pinpoint, and launch at
949 ships, but there were several bugs and inconsistencies, and the
950 code was messy. The arm command now rejects marine missiles in
951 addition to satellites, ABMs and SAMs, and clears the mission. The
952 mission command now rejects planes armed with nukes.
953 * Missiles exploding on launch pad no longer set off their nukes.
954 * The launch command now more accurately reports why a missile can't
955 be equipped. It no longer draws supplies automatically.
956 * Manually launched anti-sat now always kills when it hits, for
957 consistency with automatically launched ones.
958 * Don't permit nukes on satellites, ABMs and SAMs. Nukes on
959 satellites could be armed and disarmed even in orbit. Nukes on
960 ABMs and SAMs were lost without effect when their missile
961 intercepted. The stock game is not affected, because its
962 satellites, ABMs and SAMs all have zero load.
963 * Remove obsolete plane capabilities stealth and half-stealth. Not
964 used by the stock game.
965 * Penalize fighter combat value for any load, not just bombs. The
966 stock game's fighters can't carry anything but bombs.
967 * Make bomb work for non-tactical cargo bomber. No such planes exist
969 * Revised cargo plane rules: a cargo flight can be either an airlift
970 or an airdrop now. Airlifts carry more cargo than airdrops. A
971 cargo drop or paradrop with a non-VTOL plane is an airdrop.
972 Anything else is an airlift. This makes paradrop loads consistent
973 with drop loads. Paradrop with VTOL transports now carries twice
974 the punch, and drop with non-VTOL transports hauls less than fly.
975 In particular, the stock game's tr can't drop guns anymore.
976 * Enforce plane selection rules more tightly:
977 - bomb command can select only planes with capability bomber or
978 tactical. Before, other planes with non-zero load flew along,
979 but their bombs were silently lost.
980 - sweep command can select only planes with capability sweep.
981 Before, other planes performed ordinary reconnaissance instead.
982 - drop command can select only planes with capability cargo.
983 Before, other planes flew along but dropped nothing.
984 * Fix paradrop to fail without destroying the paratroopers when the
985 player owns the target sector.
986 * Launching an anti-sat now takes the target plane as argument.
987 Before, it took a sector argument, and targeted the lowest-numbered
988 satellite there. Rather inconvenient when your own satellite masks
990 * Remove option PINPOINTMISSILE. Deities can customize the plane
991 table to disable marine missiles.
992 * Ridiculously impotent nukes could do unpredictable interdiction
993 damage. No such nukes exist in the stock game.
994 * The production command could mispredict resource-depleting level
995 production. No such products exist in the stock game. In fact,
996 they'd be highly unusual.
997 * The update could crash or corrupt the game when a (misconfigured)
998 product depleted resource "none".
999 * Revamp the Windows port based on ideas stolen from Gnulib. Share
1000 the code between server and client.
1001 * Don't log out player when update aborts a command under Windows.
1002 Broken in 4.3.20, and not fully fixed in 4.3.21.
1003 * Fix accepting connections from hosts with "long" IPv6 address. The
1004 internal buffer had insufficient space.
1005 * Delay shutdown up to 3s to let player output buffers drain.
1006 * Fix a race between main thread and player threads, which could
1007 theoretically make the server crash on start.
1008 * Clean up synchronization between commands, update and shutdown, and
1009 when player threads sleep on I/O.
1010 * Clean up the cruft that has accumulated in and behind the empio
1011 interface, and, to a lesser degree, the empthread interface.
1012 * Fix time difference underflows in pthread and Windows code. They
1013 could potentially cause hangs, although none have been observed.
1014 * Make budget's "Sector building" line look better.
1015 * Make sector maintenance cost configurable. New sect-chr selector
1016 maint. Capitals now pay maintenance regardless of efficiency.
1017 * Overhaul show sect b.
1018 * Fix mine production resource limit for sector peffic != 100. This
1019 affects mountains in the stock game, but only with an impractically
1020 large number of ETUs per update.
1021 * Code refactoring and cleanup.
1022 * Info file fixes and improvements.
1024 Changes to Empire 4.3.22 - Sat Apr 25 11:56:29 UTC 2009
1025 * Fix a Windows client bug that could lead to hangs, at least with
1026 some versions of the C run-time. Broken in 4.3.11.
1027 * Allow building without curses terminfo. Highlighting in the client
1029 * Really fix bomb not to wipe out plane updates made while it asked
1030 for pinpoint targets. The fix in 4.3.21 didn't cover escorts.
1031 * Fix tend land not to wipe out concurrent updates.
1032 * Automatic supply fixes:
1033 - Ships with just two shells could fire a torpedo to return fire or
1035 - Ships with just one shell could use their anti-missile defense.
1036 - Land units were considered in supply even when they had not quite
1037 enough supplies. Such land units could defend without penalty,
1040 * Fix update to take dead units off carriers.
1041 * Standalone client distribution built empire instead of empire.exe
1042 for Windows. Broken in 4.3.0.
1043 * Fix client to abort script execution on SIGINT.
1044 * Fix Windows client not to hang on EOF on standard input when that
1046 * Fix a client bug that could make it hang when EOF on standard input
1047 follows an execute command closely.
1048 * Sea mines under bridge spans were disabled a long time ago, in
1049 Empire 2. The drop command refuses to mine there. Change mine
1050 command to do so as well.
1051 * Sea mines under bridge spans were mistaken for landmines by ground
1052 combat, land units retreating from bombs, and non-land unit ground
1054 * When a bridge tower collapsed, its landmines magically became
1056 * Don't log out player when he interrupts a command. Broken in
1058 * Code cleanup and portability improvements.
1059 * Info file and documentation fixes.
1061 Changes to Empire 4.3.21 - Mon Mar 9 21:34:52 UTC 2009
1062 * Fix swapsector not to wipe out concurrent changes to the swapped
1064 * Fix a bug in crash dumping that could mess up the journal and, at
1065 least in theory, mess up commands info, read, turn, and wire;
1066 announcement expiry, and reading of econfig and schedule.
1067 * Fix bomb not to wipe out plane updates made while it asked for
1069 * When bombing ships with a force containing both planes with and
1070 without capability ASW, the bomb command could fail to report
1071 presence of submarines, and could refuse to bomb ships when there
1072 were only submarines.
1073 * Leaving land units behind after a victorious attack could in some
1074 cases wipe out changes made to them since the victory.
1075 * The timestamp selectors added to commodity, load and trade in
1076 4.3.12 could lead to spurious command failures. None have been
1077 observed in the wild.
1078 * Don't log out player when update aborts a command. Broken in
1080 * Code refactoring and cleanup.
1082 Changes to Empire 4.3.20 - Fri Feb 20 18:14:20 UTC 2009
1083 * Option LOANS is now disabled by default.
1084 * Option RAILWAYS is now enabled by default.
1085 * Many fixes to automatic supply:
1086 - Planes flying interception or support missions, abms intercepting
1087 ballistic missiles, and the launch command for missiles and
1088 anti-sats could all supply more shells than necessary, lose
1089 shells, or conjure them up.
1090 - Ships shooting down marine missiles could supply more shells than
1091 necessary, or lose shells.
1092 - Supply ships could conjure up shells when firing guns using
1093 multiple shells, or launching torpedoes, or dropping depth
1094 charges, or shooting down marine missiles. No supply ships
1095 capable of doing that exist in the stock game.
1096 - Supply engineers could conjure up shells when laying mines. They
1097 don't exist in the stock game.
1098 - load, lload and supply could supply land units with enough food
1099 from the sector containing them to starve the sector.
1100 - Sectors were charged too much mobility for moving supplies
1102 - Land units serving as supply source no longer draw supplies
1103 recursively, because the bugs there are too hard to fix to be
1105 - Defending and reacting units only checked whether they could draw
1106 supplies, but didn't actually draw them.
1107 - load, lload, supply, assault and board no longer supply land
1108 units from ships carrying them. This feature, added in 4.0.14,
1109 was inconsistent with other ways to supply.
1110 - Don't use automatic supply to avoid starvation at the update. It
1111 adds complexity to the update. How much good it does to players
1112 is highly doubtful; certainly nobody can rely on it. It isn't
1113 covered by the starvation command. Ships or land units could
1114 steal enough food from their sector to make it starve.
1115 - lmine could only fetch shells for engineers that use ammo. The
1116 stock game's engineers all do.
1117 The changes listed for load and lload are actually lies, because
1118 supply has been disabled there since 4.3.17.
1119 * Don't let an engineer lay mines while it is on a ship or land unit,
1120 or in a foreign sector.
1121 * Sectors and ships no longer need shells to fire flak.
1122 * Use IPv4 and v6 only when suitable interfaces are configured.
1123 * Fix turn off not to fail when the message is empty. Broken in
1125 * Don't nag the deity about game hours restriction in force all the
1127 * Tell deity when the game is down, just like players. Also make the
1128 information available in xdump, as game selector down.
1129 * Corrupt mailboxes could crash the server.
1130 * Fix reject accept. Broken in 4.3.4.
1131 * If a player was at a prompt when the deity turned the game down, he
1132 was allowed to enter one more command.
1133 * Air defense is no longer separate from interception. Putting a
1134 plane on air defense now merely changes where it intercepts.
1135 Separate air defense added too much pointless complexity. Its
1136 implementation violated design assumptions of the intercept code.
1137 Because of that, the same plane could intercept both an air defense
1138 mission and the planes that triggered it, and the damage it
1139 received in the first interception was wiped out.
1140 * Intercept the same all along the flight path. In each sector, any
1141 country owning the sector, a surface ship or a land unit there gets
1142 to intercept. Before, only the sector owner got to intercept,
1143 except for the assembly point and the target sector. In the target
1144 sector, any country owning surface ships or land units got to
1145 intercept in addition to the sector owner. Thus, a sector owner
1146 with surface ships or land units there got to intercept twice. The
1147 sector owner did not get to intercept at the assembly point,
1148 even when it was the target sector.
1149 * Spotting rule changes:
1150 - Ships and land units now spot overflying planes along all of the
1151 flight path instead of just the target sector, and no longer
1152 report allied planes.
1153 - Planes now spot ships and land units only when flying recon or
1154 sweep, and along all of their flight path instead of just the
1155 target sector. It still takes a spy plane to identify ships and
1157 - Planes now spot ships and land units in a sector even when all
1159 - Planes now spot all foreign ships and land units, not just
1161 * Fix SAM interception for intercepts other than the first.
1162 * Fix air defense and flak over sectors allied to the planes. Air
1163 defense was broken in Empire 2. Flak was broken in 4.2.8.
1164 * Establishing contact by spotting planes from sectors didn't work.
1165 * Fix reconnaissance patrols to use sonar when any capable plane is
1166 present. Before, all planes had to be capable.
1167 * Fix recon and sweep not to spy after all spy planes are gone.
1168 * Fix a bug that made multiple clients running on the same Windows
1169 machine interfere with each other. Broken in 4.3.11.
1170 * Fix enforcing game hours for players already logged in. Broken in
1172 * Fix distribution not to abandon a distribution center by exporting
1174 * Many fixes to load, unload, lload and lunload:
1175 - Now usable for deities.
1176 - Plug loopholes that let you steal foreign commodities by making
1177 load/lload unload and unload/lunload load through use of negative
1179 - Fix not to let you give away civilians.
1180 - You can't use lload in foreign sectors or lunload with foreign
1181 land units anymore. Loading stuff in foreign sectors was
1182 prohibited already for ships.
1183 - lload and lunload now work on foreign land units only when
1184 they're explicitly named by UID. This matches behavior of load
1186 - Fix to test relations of foreign object's owner to player instead
1187 of the other way round.
1188 * Make sure land units with maximum mobility can attack mountains.
1189 * Fix land unit attack mobility cost. Broken in 4.3.6.
1190 * Conditions comparing string-valued selectors like wing to unquoted
1191 values are now interpreted more smartly. Before, unquoted strings
1192 were prone to be interpreted as selector names even when that made
1193 no sense. You still have to disambiguate truly ambiguous cases
1194 like w=w for planes, e.g. as wing=w or w='w'.
1195 * Fix reporting of shot spies in news. Broken in 4.3.16.
1196 * Remove econfig key mission_mob_cost. Questionable feature, and
1197 hasn't been used in a long time.
1198 * Reserve and escort missions now have an op-area, like all the other
1200 * Land units now react only when on a reserve mission. The lrange
1201 command is gone. The edit command still accepts and ignores the
1202 land unit key 'P' for compatibility, but it is deprecated.
1203 * Fix a bug that could mess up mission op-area when the range of
1204 ship, plane or land unit on the mission decreases, e.g. through the
1206 * Reserve missions no longer give a bonus to reaction range.
1208 * Code refactoring and cleanup.
1210 Changes to Empire 4.3.19 - Sun Dec 7 23:15:34 UTC 2008
1211 * LWP doesn't work with Darwin due to OS bugs, avoid it for now.
1212 * Don't let ships double-retreat first on 'i' (injured) and then on
1213 'h' (helpless) when shelled.
1214 * Fix a bug that suppressed the "sunk!" message. Broken in 4.3.17.
1215 * Log out player when maximum time per day is exceeded. Before, he
1216 could remain logged in with visitor privileges only, but once
1217 logged out could not log back in.
1218 * If a player was at a prompt when either game hours restriction
1219 started or maximum time per day was exceeded, he was allowed to
1220 enter one more command.
1221 * Deitying a capital failed to charge money and report news. Broken
1223 * Overhaul accounting of play time, fixing minor inaccuracies.
1224 * Fix parsing of 24:00 in econfig key game_hours and
1226 * New option RAILWAYS.
1227 * Che ages just like military reserves (1% per 24 ETUs).
1228 * Permit ships to assault the sector they're in.
1229 * Sectors eating less than one unit of food don't make one unit of
1230 food for free anymore. They still can't starve.
1231 * New concept sector terrain. Deities can use it to make sectors
1232 other than wilderness redesignatable. See sect.config for more
1234 * Represent play time in seconds rather than minutes. This affects
1235 xdump: nat selector minused (counting minutes) is replaced by
1236 timeused (counting seconds).
1237 * Improved nightly build, with additional tests.
1239 Changes to Empire 4.3.18 - Sat Oct 18 18:39:17 UTC 2008
1240 * Fix building of planes, land units and nukes with UIDs that have
1241 never been used before. This could crash the server on some
1242 systems in certain states. Broken in 4.3.17.
1243 * Improved nightly build, with restructured and extended tests.
1245 Changes to Empire 4.3.17 - Sat Sep 20 16:07:44 UTC 2008
1246 * Fix standalone client build for Windows. Broken in 4.3.11.
1247 * Disable automatic supply of land units on load for now, it's
1248 broken, and can be abused to duplicate supplies.
1249 * Make trade show exactly what's on sale, remove option SHOWPLANE.
1250 * Stop ships, planes, land units and nukes on violent takeover, just
1252 * Wipe orders when ships, planes, land units and nukes are taken over
1253 violently or given away peacefully. Fleet, wing, army and mission
1254 were already cleared in many, but not all cases. Other orders were
1255 never cleared: mission op-areas (visible in xdump), ship autonav
1256 orders, ship sail path (including ship to follow and mobility
1257 quota), land unit retreat orders, plane range limit, and land unit
1259 * Fix takeover of stuff by attack, assault, board, lboard, paradrop
1261 - Corrupt land unit file could lead to infinite recursion.
1262 - Take over nuke armed on plane along with the plane. Broken in
1264 - Taking over land units with negative mobility increased mobility
1265 to zero. Ditto for planes embarked on ships or land units.
1266 * Fix a bug that made set and xdump not recognize unused trade lots
1268 * Fix giving away stuff by trading it:
1269 - When an armed nuke is sold separately from its plane, take it off
1270 the plane. You couldn't do that before 4.3.3.
1271 - Give away nuke armed on sold plane along with the plane. Broken
1273 - Don't zero mobility of planes and land units on sold ships.
1274 * Fix giving away stuff by unloading from its carrier: Give away any
1275 nukes armed on planes (broken in 4.3.3) and land units loaded on
1276 land units. The latter can't happen in the stock game.
1277 * Fix giving away stuff by scrapping or scuttling its carrier:
1279 - Disarm the nuke from a plane instead of destroying it.
1280 - Give away any loaded land units and planes, too.
1282 - Fix scuttle to ask for confirmation when scuttling a tradeship in
1283 an unsuitable sector even when the tradeship is pirated. Broken
1285 - Fix scuttle to require 2% harbor efficiency for a trade ship to
1286 pay. Also require at least friendly relations.
1287 - Make autonav refuse scuttle orders in unsuitable sectors.
1288 * Clean up rules on where you can scrap stuff:
1289 - Ships in own or friendly, efficient harbors (relations used not
1290 to matter, contrary to info)
1291 - Planes in own or allied, efficient airfields (friendly used to
1292 work as well, contrary to info)
1293 - Land units in any own or allied sector (relations used not to
1294 matter, and you couldn't scrap them on ships)
1295 Also tell player why something can't be scrapped instead of
1296 ignoring it silently.
1297 * Rewrite the broken code to move land units, planes and nukes along
1298 with their carrier. The old code was a hack that didn't update
1299 timestamps (so incremental dumps didn't pick up the movement), and
1300 it didn't cover all uses. The update, in particular, was prone to
1301 see cargo in old locations, which could screw up repairs.
1302 * Expire lost items at the update instead of continuously.
1303 * Replace econfig key lost_items_timeout by lost_keep_hours.
1304 * Minor Windows threading fixes.
1305 * Journal now uses human-readable names to identify threads.
1306 * Ship and land unit load counters are no longer stored in game
1307 state, because they duplicate information already there. Same for
1308 the type of nuke loaded on a plane. Remove field nuketype from
1309 xdump plane. Clients can simply find the plane's nuke instead.
1310 The edit command still accepts and ignores the plane key 'n' for
1311 compatibility, but it is deprecated.
1312 * Ship and land unit load counts as displayed by ship, sdump, land,
1313 ldump, ship selectors nplane, nxlight, nchoppers, nland, and land
1314 selectors nxlight, nland are now reliable. They used to get out of
1316 * Ship load counts now reflect what is loaded, not how it is stored.
1317 For instance, if a light carrier, capable of carrying 4 x-lights
1318 and 20 light planes carries nothing but 5 sams, we now have
1319 nxlight=5, nplane=0 instead of nxlight=4, nplane=1.
1320 * New cargo lists data structure to let code find loaded planes, land
1321 units and nukes easily and efficiently.
1322 * Revamped upkeep of lost file. It should be reliable now.
1323 * Disable the ill-advised error recovery on sector access that swept
1324 bugs under the carpet rather than recovering from them.
1325 * Occupied sectors no longer revert to the old owner when all
1326 military and land units go away. This feature was added in
1327 Chainsaw 3. It wasn't integrated properly with the che code
1328 (things went wrong when che killed all defenders, but couldn't
1329 convert the sector due to its loyalty), and combat code (if an
1330 attack killed off all local defenders and got defeated by reacting
1331 units, the sector changed ownership anyway, silently).
1332 * Include destination coordinates in interception and plane mission
1334 * Client could misdiagnose redirections and executes as unauthorized,
1335 or die outright. Broken in 4.3.11.
1336 * Fix xdump realm to dump player instead of absolute coordinates.
1337 Disclosed the true origin. Broken in 4.3.0.
1338 * Fix spy to reliably avoid spying same sector more than once.
1339 * The map drawing code could smash the heap when the world was
1341 * When a satellite's launch trajectory was off, its coordinates could
1342 get screwed up, which made it invisible in skywatch.
1343 * Fix several bugs that made the path command screw up when the path
1345 * Fix the default size of the map shown by move, test and transport
1347 * Fix bugs that could make arguments in area or dist syntax miss
1348 ships, planes, land units and nukes at the border of the selected
1349 area, if that area spans the whole world. In sufficiently small
1350 worlds, it could also make radar miss satellites and ships, sonar
1351 miss ships, satellite miss ships and land units, nuclear
1352 detonations miss ships, planes, land units and nukes, automatic
1353 supply miss ship and land unit supply sources, ships and land units
1354 fail to return fire, ships fail to fire support.
1355 * Maps sometimes showed x-coordinates as three lines instead of two
1357 * Improved nightly build, tests in particular.
1358 * Code refactoring and cleanup.
1360 Changes to Empire 4.3.16 - Sat Aug 9 15:56:52 UTC 2008
1361 * Production command incorrectly limited the number of graduates,
1362 happy strollers, technological breakthroughs and medical
1363 discoveries produced by a sector to 999. Broken in 4.2.15.
1364 * Fix a bug in improve that could let you spend more money than you
1366 * Fix work command not to spend more mobility than requested, and to
1367 round mobility use randomly instead of down.
1368 * Commands demobilize, convert and work no longer let you spend more
1369 money than you have. Commands demobilize and convert no longer ask
1370 for confirmation before spending more than half your money. Saving
1371 that feature would have been more work than it's worth.
1372 * Remove undocumented key 'd' at bomb ship, plane and land unit
1374 * Fix land unit flak when pin-bombed to match flak when overflown:
1375 proportional to efficiency, and randomly rounded. Was missed in
1377 * Don't permit bombing of embarked planes and land units.
1378 * Fix capital maintenance to charge at 60% efficiency.
1379 * launch command now requires only 40% plane efficiency, for
1380 consistency with other ways to launch missiles.
1381 * Disable collateral damage when automatically launched missiles miss
1382 their target. Collateral damage was done even when the launch
1383 failed or the missile got intercepted. It's been disabled for
1384 manually launched missiles since 4.0.18, for the same reason.
1385 * Fix a bug that corrupted the lostitems file. Broken in 4.3.12.
1386 * Show command changes:
1387 - Move product information from "show sect c" into new "show
1388 product", and reformat it to be easier to understand.
1389 - New column navigability in "show sect s".
1390 - "show sect s" now shows the packing bonus type instead of
1391 selected packing bonuses. "show item" shows the actual bonuses
1393 - "show sect b" now shows the usual values in addition to unusual
1395 * Fix interdiction to obey op-area for missiles.
1396 * Fix a bug that caused a stale sources.mk to be distributed in the
1397 4.3.14 an 4.3.15 tarballs. The latter does not build out of the
1398 box because of that.
1399 * Don't strip tab characters from quoted command arguments. Broken
1401 * shutdown commands now always take effect immediately. Before, they
1402 could be delayed by up to a minute.
1403 * shutdown could start multiple shutdown threads when you initiated a
1404 shutdown shortly after cancelling one. This screwed up the timing
1406 * Deity syntax of zdone changed, and is now documented in info.
1407 * The threshold command could be tricked into accepting negative
1409 * Fix designate to always write updated bmap to disk.
1410 * Fix bomb to fail on empty <pin|strat> argument instead of flying
1412 * Fix a bug in distribute that screwed up the current sector's
1413 distribution center when the command got aborted.
1414 * Commands arm, bomb, deliver, drop, fire, fly, paradrop, recon,
1415 lmine, order, power, range, sail, shutdown, sweep and tend did not
1416 honor command abortion at some prompts.
1417 * Fix a bug in handling of EOF from client that could bite in the
1419 - EOF at target prompts for bombing commodities, ships, planes and
1420 land units sent the server into an infinite loop that ate all
1422 - EOF at sail's path prompt crashed the server.
1423 - EOF at some prompts in deliver, designate, fly, morale, zdone,
1424 attack and assault didn't abort the command.
1426 * Selector terr is now the same as terr0 for mortal players, and
1427 dterr for deities. This matches how the territory command works.
1428 Unfortunately, this required us to rename xdump sect field terr to
1429 terr0. Sorry about that.
1430 * Fix bomb not to let you bomb dead ships and land units.
1431 * Make the retreat command a bit more helpful on retreat conditions,
1432 and make it fail on bad conditions.
1433 * Fix the mapper scripts. Broken in 4.2.0.
1434 * Fix flying commands not to let planes do double duty as escorts.
1436 * When a minesweeper hit a mine after sweeping, the mine wasn't used
1437 up. If it sank the minesweeper, the code accessed freed memory,
1438 which could clobber the ship file or worse. Broken in 4.0.17.
1439 * Don't let non-light units board ships that can't carry them.
1440 * Capitals can now employ up to 1000 civilians instead of 999.
1441 * Spy command changes:
1442 - Spy now requires sector military. Before, presence of land units
1443 was sufficient, but spies shot were only deduced from sector
1444 military. If you lost more spies than you had sector military,
1445 the rest came back from the dead.
1446 - Spy no longer ignores non-sea sectors without civilians, military
1448 - Remove columns lnd, pln from spy report. The values didn't match
1449 the reported land units and planes, and could leak the presence
1451 - Establish contact when spy succeeds even though the spy was
1453 * Fix news reporting and damage when land units interdict ships in
1454 sectors other than sea.
1455 * Fix land unit return fire damage to ships to take accuracy into
1456 account, like the fire command and interdiction does.
1457 * Remove the inconsistent shelling damage reduction for range. Fire
1458 command got damage reduced by 10-20% with a chance depending on
1459 range ("Wind deflects shells"). Ships interdicting got it reduced
1460 by half. Other ways to shell did not get damage reduced for range.
1461 * Fix ground combat to report defending land units. Broken in 4.3.4.
1462 * Info file and documentation fixes and improvements.
1464 Changes to Empire 4.3.15 - Sun May 18 08:59:30 UTC 2008
1465 * The edit command keys deprecated in 4.3.10 are now gone.
1466 * fairland now obeys game file locks.
1467 * Do not leak world creation time in files utility, because that
1468 facilitates attacks against fairland's PRNG. Broken in 4.3.12.
1469 * Fix starvation not to starve one more than it should. The last man
1470 on a boat or land unit now can't starve anymore.
1471 * Fix a crash bug in satellite. Broken in 4.2.7 and not fixed
1472 correctly in 4.2.12.
1473 * Fix a coordinate normalization bug that could theoretically lead to
1474 buffer overruns and other unpleasantness. None have been
1475 reproduced, though. Broken in 4.3.12.
1476 * Remove option FUEL. The abstract idea of tying ships and land
1477 units to a logistical tether is sound, the concrete implementation
1478 as option FUEL is flawed. It adds too much busy-work to the game
1479 to be enjoyable. It hasn't been enabled in a public game for
1480 years. The code implementing it is ugly, repetitive, and a burden
1481 to maintain. The edit command still accepts and ignores the fuel
1482 keys for compatibility, but they are deprecated.
1483 * Fix pin-bomb not to report subs when there are none.
1484 * You now have to take a capital to capture the victim's money, loans
1485 or market lots. Merely obliterating the capital doesn't cut it.
1486 It still makes the victim lose money, though.
1487 * Fix a bug that could theoretically allow sacking of non-existant
1488 capitals of visitors, deities and such.
1489 * You now gain BTUs and MOB_ACCESS mobility before the first update
1490 again. You didn't since 4.3.10 introduced the ETU clock.
1491 * Fix edit to detect when the edited object changes while it's being
1493 * Fix xdump nat for relations: it got HIDDEN backwards. Broken in
1495 * Fix origin command not to prompt twice for its argument. Broken in
1497 * Info file improvements.
1499 Changes to Empire 4.3.14 - Mon May 5 04:57:03 UTC 2008
1500 * Another round of fixes to the fire command:
1501 - Don't disclose where the target retreated to.
1502 - Charge the target shells for returning fire.
1503 - Always use guns when the target is out of range, even if it's a
1504 submarine. Before, the difference in shell use disclosed whether
1505 the target is a submarine. Loophole opened in 4.3.12.
1506 - Make depth charges again work with just one shell. Failing the
1507 command in that case lets players find out whether the target is
1508 a submarine. Loophole opened in 4.3.12.
1509 - Detect when the firing sector, ship or land unit changes across
1510 the target prompt. Can be abused to duplicate commodities, and
1512 * Fix parsing of anchor-relative time in update schedule. Broken in
1514 * Fix logging of player input in the journal to include command
1515 interruption and EOF.
1516 * Fix oversights in 4.3.12's change to keep track of flying planes:
1517 planes could be erroneously reported damaged by their own ground
1518 strikes. Happened with missions and the launch command.
1519 * Fix load not load hardened missiles.
1520 * Fix harden not to harden missiles loaded on land units.
1521 * New server option -E to choose what to do on recoverable internal
1522 error. You can now make the server dump core and keep going (not
1523 implemented for Windows). New econfig key post_crash_dump_hook to
1524 run a program after crash-dumping. See scripts/savecore for an
1526 * Journal entries are now flushed to disk right away even when the
1527 server is not running in debug mode.
1528 * Don't let land units load trains.
1529 * Allow deity to display power report for all types of countries,
1531 * Fix designate's check for disallowed sector types. Broken in
1533 * Documentation fixes.
1535 Changes to Empire 4.3.13 - Tue Apr 15 19:03:11 UTC 2008
1536 * Work around strptime() lossage on some systems. Fixes the parsing
1537 of the schedule file there.
1538 * New selector maxnoc for xdump version.
1539 * Fix initialization of realms in newcap. Broken in 4.3.12.
1540 * Fix add for status arguments active, god, delete. Broken in
1542 * Info file, manual page and documentation fixes.
1544 Changes to Empire 4.3.12 - Wed Apr 2 05:35:06 UTC 2008
1545 * Fix rounding error in update that could result in more babies than
1546 food permits, and negative food.
1547 * Fix a bug that could lead to unfair thread scheduling under
1549 * Fix ship and land unit missile interdiction and ballistic missile
1550 interception to require a proper base. Before, missiles could
1551 launch from anywhere for that.
1553 - Don't allow launching from unowned sectors.
1554 - Don't destroy missiles stuck on foreign ships.
1555 - Use up the supplies required for launching an asat only when it
1557 - Don't ignore satellites' fuel use.
1558 * Deity command newcap now requires its second argument (sanctuary
1559 coordinates). Before, it tried to pick a suitable location when
1560 none was given. The code implementing this feature had problems,
1561 and it's not worth fixing, because it is obscure, and rarely (if
1562 ever) used: no conscientious deity would use it for a real game,
1563 and for blitzes fairland does a better job.
1564 * Keep track of flying planes properly. This fixes a number of bugs:
1565 - While the bomb command awaited pin-bombing target input from the
1566 player, other players could interact with the pin-bombers and
1567 escorts as if they were sitting in their bases: spy them, damage,
1568 capture, load, unload, or upgrade them, even get intercepted by
1569 them. But any changes to those planes were wiped out when they
1571 - The bomb command could bomb its own escorts, directly (pin-bomb
1572 planes) or through collateral damage, strategic sector damage,
1573 collapsing bridges or nuke damage. The damage to the escorts was
1574 wiped out when they landed.
1575 - If you asked for a plane to fly both in the primary mission and
1576 escort, you got charged fuel for two sorties instead of one.
1577 * Plug memory leaks in plane interception.
1578 * Fix trade not to let the buyer teleport satellites (not in orbit)
1579 and asats to an arbitrary sector. Abusable, because abms
1580 intercepted from anywhere, and satellites could be launched from
1582 * The PRNG seed is now logged in the journal.
1583 * Fix nightly build for Windows.
1584 * Fix crash bug that bit when custom tables contained columns names
1585 that existed, but weren't supposed to be in the custom table.
1586 * New timestamp selector for commodity, country, game, loan, nation,
1587 news, realm, trade, treaty to support incremental xdump.
1588 * Deity commands newcap and add wipe the nation more thoroughly. add
1589 no longer touches relations and flags for status active and god.
1590 * New utility program empdump to export and import game state as
1591 plain text. Check its manual for details, including limitations.
1592 * Plane, ship and land unit stats are no longer stored as game state,
1593 but recomputed from tech and base stats as needed.
1594 * xdump ver is no longer a special case. Syntax "xdump ver" is now
1595 deprecated. Use "xdump version *".
1596 * Fire and torpedo cleanup and bug hunt:
1597 - Plug memory leak in fire command.
1598 - Fix ammunition use when returning fire: resupply could lose
1599 shells when returning fire to multiple targets, and land units
1600 were charged per target instead of just once.
1601 - Interdicting land units now resupply shells automatically, for
1602 consistency with other ways to fire.
1603 - torpedo and fire no longer resupply shells automatically. The
1604 latter used to resupply land units only.
1605 - Land units no longer have to be in supply to fire actively, for
1606 consistency with other ways to fire.
1607 - Submarines with zero mobility can no longer interdict, for
1608 consistency with other ways to torpedo.
1609 - Fix bugs that let submarines without capability torp use
1610 torpedoes to return fire and interdict.
1611 - Fix torpedo command not to require a line of sight for return
1612 fire and depth charges, and to use torpedo range instead of
1613 firing range for return torpedoes.
1614 - Active fire and interdiction didn't work for ships with zero
1615 firing range, even though return fire and support did. No such
1616 ships exist in the stock game.
1617 - Let land units with zero firing range and non-zero firing damage
1618 fire, for consistency with ships. No such units exist in the
1620 - Ships required different numbers of military to operate their
1621 guns for the various kinds of fire. Unify to require 2*N-1
1622 military to fire N guns.
1623 - Ship ammunition use differed for the various kinds of fire.
1624 Unify to use one shell per two guns.
1625 - Forts could fire support even when there were not enough mil.
1626 - Fix automatic shell resupply in several places to supply exactly
1627 the shells actually fired, no more, no less.
1628 * Change depth charges back to how they are documented and worked
1629 before 4.0.6, mostly: require no guns, one military, do damage like
1630 shell fire from three guns (before 4.0.6: two guns), use two
1631 shells. In 4.0.6's model, they worked exactly like shell fire
1632 (require guns and gun crew, non-zero firing range, damage and
1633 ammunition use scales with available guns), except for missions,
1634 which was a bug. Note that depth charge damage for all ships is
1635 now like fire from three guns for two shells. No change for dd; af
1636 did two gun damage for one shell before, and nas did four gun
1637 damage for two shells.
1638 * The edit command keys deprecated in 4.3.3 are now gone.
1639 * Fix build not to screw up automatic dependencies on certain compile
1641 * Fix a bug that could prevent repeated news from properly
1642 aggregating into one news item.
1643 * Properly initialize all bits in game state files, even those that
1645 * Fix explore's test for stopping on a splashed bridge. The bug made
1646 explore print to a bogus message.
1647 * Fix spelling of symbol airburst in table plane-flags. This could
1649 * Change designate not to check total cost before executing the
1650 redesignation. The code implementing that was buggy and too ugly
1651 to live. Designate doesn't cost anything in the stock game.
1652 * Always charge land units at least as much mobility for assaulting
1653 from non-landing ships as from landing ships. Before, marines lost
1654 all mobility when assaulting from a non-landing ship, which could
1655 be less than what the same assault costs from a landing ship (half
1657 * Fix LWP's stack initialization for -s. It caused crashes on some
1659 * Fix confused and buggy bridge splashing code:
1660 - Flying planes could be reported drowned.
1661 - Pin-bombing a bridge head failed to collapse bridge spans for
1662 lack of support, unless the pin-bombing caused collateral damage.
1663 - Corrupt sector file could lead to infinite recursion.
1664 * Relative names now work for econfig keys data and info.
1665 * Fix utility programs to abort on internal errors. They used to
1666 print a message and attempt to recover.
1667 * Fix off-by-one in fairland that ate the last expansion island.
1668 * Switch from CVS to git.
1669 * Code refactoring and cleanup.
1670 * Portability fixes.
1671 * Info file, manual page and documentation fixes and updates.
1673 Changes to Empire 4.3.11 - Tue Jan 1 18:57:38 UTC 2008
1674 * New sector selector elev. It's set by fairland, but has no effect
1675 on the game. It can be useful for deities to customize a world
1676 created by fairland.
1677 * The client now copes with IDs greater than 15. The Empire
1678 protocol currently uses 14 IDs.
1679 * Rewrite the client's code for reading server output during login.
1680 The old code could write one byte beyond the end of the buffer
1681 (theoretically a remote hole), got confused by long lines, and
1682 lines that didn't arrive in one piece.
1683 * Long country name, password or user name crashed the client.
1684 * Fix xdump not to deny access to game state tables when maximum
1685 minutes per day are exceeded.
1686 * The server considers a country bankrupt when its treasury is
1687 negative. Except when it doesn't. Fix that:
1688 - report misreported countries with $0 as broke.
1689 - If a command spent a few cents more than you had, commands requiring
1690 money became unavailable even when rounding brought you back to
1691 $0. But logging out and back in then bankrupted you.
1692 - If your treasury rose to exactly $0, commands requiring money
1693 remained unavailable.
1694 - If you had $0, sectors didn't build and sectors and ships didn't
1695 produce at the update.
1696 * Fix a bug in trade that made your money evaporate when a trade fell
1697 through because you couldn't fully pay. This bug was there since
1698 the introduction of the market in 4.0.0. It got aggravated by the
1699 removal of forced loans in 4.3.0.
1700 * Fix printing of the new group in army, fleet and wing. Broken in
1702 * Fix flash not to screw up the message when the first argument
1703 contains white-space.
1704 * Don't let planes intercept when they are stuck in foreign bases, on
1705 inefficient ships or land units, or on land units loaded on ships
1707 * Fix a bug that made interception require petrol to be present even
1708 for planes that don't use fuel (SAMs). Broken in 4.3.3. Air
1709 defense missions weren't affected.
1710 * fairland and setsector now limit fertility to 100 instead of 120,
1711 like the other resources.
1712 * Generalize the autonav hack for fishing boats so it covers oil
1714 * Fix bug in path command that made it swallow every other step.
1716 * The execute command no longer supports redirections and execute in
1717 batch files. Flaws in the Empire protocol make it next to
1718 impossible for clients to implement that correctly. See
1719 doc/clients-howto for an explanation.
1720 * Rewrite much of the client's code for sending commands and
1721 receiving server output:
1722 - No longer blocks on sending commands, which could deadlock the
1724 - Fix race condition that could cause server output to be discarded
1725 on EOF on standard input.
1726 - Don't discard server output when reading standard input fails.
1727 - Fix error handling for execute and other, more obscure cases.
1728 - More rigorous error checking for redirections and execute.
1729 Clearer error messages, too.
1730 - Fix execute redirected to file or pipe. Believed to be broken in
1732 - The client now creates files for redirections with the same
1733 permissions whether the redirection is in a pipe or not. Before,
1734 redirections without a pipe created files with no permissions for
1735 group and others. This change may make your redirected output
1736 visible to other users on your system. Use the usual controls,
1737 like umask, to restrict permissions to your liking.
1738 - Reject unexpected redirections (violating the protocol). Before,
1739 they silently replaced the current one, and in the case of pipes
1740 leaked file descriptors and memory.
1741 - Redirections in batch files are not implemented. They didn't
1742 quite work before, and could leak memory and file descriptors. A
1743 flaw in the Empire protocol makes them next to impossible to
1744 implement correctly.
1745 - The execute command in batch files is not implemented. A flaw in
1746 the Empire protocol makes this practically useless anyway.
1747 - Old code leaked memory in various places.
1748 - Unfortunate incompatibility with older servers: if you type the
1749 EOF character (normally ^D) at an argument prompt, the session
1750 hangs. Use the interrupt character (normally ^C) to get out.
1751 * The client now supports options -h and -v.
1752 * The client no longer zaps its command line in a lame attempt at
1753 protecting users who foolishly specify passwords on the command
1754 line. Zapping annoys system administrators and creates a false
1756 * Journal entries are now flushed to disk right away when the server
1757 is running in debug mode.
1758 * Fix bugs in load that could make loading operations fail noisily
1759 instead of silently on some systems.
1760 * Server now reliably shuts down session when it receives an
1761 end-of-file condition from the client. Before, it merely failed
1762 the current command when it got it at an argument prompt.
1763 * Fix bug in execute that could crash the server on some systems when
1764 it prompts for the argument.
1765 * Fix bug that let you check whether a non-allied carrier is
1766 efficient enough for takeoff when one of your planes got stuck
1768 * Fix bug that let you attempt to escort a one-way mission to a
1769 carrier with non-light, non-interceptor escorts. Such planes don't
1770 fit on carriers, and the command then failed with a bogus error
1771 message. Before 4.2.17, the planes flew, and the escorts were
1773 * Change the rules for fitting planes on ships slightly, so that the
1774 order of loading no longer matters. Choppers and x-lights can now
1775 use plane slots even when not light. X-light choppers, which don't
1776 exist in the stock game, can no longer use x-light slots.
1777 * The server now keeps its log file open, just like the journal.
1778 * New server option -R to set the PRNG seed. This is for
1779 reproducible tests. Change the Windows-only service uninstall
1780 options from -r/-R to -u/-U.
1781 * Supply a real PRNG for Windows instead of the leaky water-pistol
1783 * Threads sleeping until a specified time could return early under
1784 Windows. This could cause missed updates. Broken in 4.3.10.
1785 * Fix missing newline in show updates.
1786 * Power report didn't factor tech into power correctly. Broken in
1788 * Code refactoring and cleanup.
1789 * Info file and documentation fixes and updates.
1791 Changes to Empire 4.3.10 - Thu Sep 6 17:59:53 UTC 2007
1792 * Bridge spans now cost $1000 instead of $2000, and bridge towers
1793 $3000 instead of $7500.
1794 * The Windows port now supports IPv6, but it still needs to be
1795 enabled manually at compile-time.
1796 * The custom table reader detects more errors.
1797 * Do not leak world creation time in files and fairland, because
1798 that facilitates attacks against the PRNG. This misfeature crept
1800 * Remove the ancient, crufty non-UCONTEXT system-dependent LWP code.
1801 Using it required manual hackery since 4.3.0.
1802 * Plug file descriptor leak in add command.
1803 * Don't kill player connections violently when their thread appears
1804 to be hung. Threads being aborted by update or shutdown could be
1805 misidentified as hung, and the violence could lead to resource
1806 leaks, locked out updates, and corrupted game state.
1807 * Fix LWP to reliably wake up threads sleeping for a time. Before,
1808 players with a sufficiently fast connection could starve out system
1809 threads, including the update.
1810 * Fix a class of bugs that made commands behave differently while the
1811 update is attempting to take control:
1812 - No MOB_ACCESS mobility was gained.
1813 - Telegrams were miscounted.
1814 - Bulletins got misfiled as production reports.
1815 - The navigate command ignored sail paths.
1816 - The declare command was more quiet, and declarations of war
1817 failed silently when SLOW_WAR was enabled.
1818 - Many messages got misdirected to bulletins.
1819 Some of these bugs go back all the way to Empire 2, ca 1995.
1820 * New deity command reload, effect similar to SIGHUP.
1821 * Not voting for a demand update no longer lets you veto further
1822 demand updates. This feature was flawed (it encourages players to
1823 vote late so that they can tactically vote no and thus build up
1824 veto rights), virtually unused, and buggy. The edit command still
1825 accepts and ignores the country key 'U' for compatibility, but it
1827 * Fix zdone not to claim to have triggered an update when they're
1829 * New update scheduler and ETU clock:
1830 - New schedule file. See doc/schedule for how to use it. Replaces
1831 econfig keys update_policy, adj_update, update_times, hourslop,
1832 blitz_time. A change of schedule does not require a server
1834 - The force command can no longer force updates in the future.
1835 Edit the schedule file for that.
1836 - New command show updates to show the update schedule. Obsoletes
1838 - New xdump game and xdump updates.
1839 - New utility program empsched to help test update schedules.
1840 - Replace option DEMANDUPDATE and econfig key update_demandpolicy
1841 by econfig key update_demand.
1842 - econfig key update_demandtimes no longer applies to scheduled
1844 - You now receive new BTUs at the update in addition to login.
1845 - You now always gain the same BTUs and MOB_ACCESS mobility per
1846 turn, even when the update schedule changes, updates get missed,
1847 or unscheduled demand updates run.
1848 - Remove the mobupdate command, because porting it to the new ETU
1849 clock is not worth it.
1850 * Redesign of synchronization between commands, update and shutdown,
1851 and how updates are triggered:
1852 - Simplify update to a single thread waiting for the trigger.
1853 Before, three update threads had to perform a carefully
1854 choreographed dance to make updates happen. The dance relied on
1855 thread priorities for correctness, which are only implemented by
1856 LWP. With pthreads and under Windows, demand updates were prone
1857 to two update threads starting up concurrently. Even with LWP,
1858 forced and demand updates could lead to double updates.
1859 - Use a lock for synchronization: commands take it shared, update
1860 and shutdown take it exclusive. This makes update and shutdown
1861 block until all aborted commands terminated and gave up their
1862 lock. Before, they proceeded blindly after waiting two or one
1863 seconds respectively, which was cheesy and unsafe.
1864 - New commands no longer fail while the update is pending, they are
1865 delayed until after the update.
1866 - New commands can no longer start during shutdown. Before, they
1867 could, but risked getting killed violently, possibly corrupting
1869 - Fix command execution so that commands blocked in writing
1870 redirections are abortable. The bug allowed players to delay
1871 update and shutdown indefinitely.
1872 - Fix shutdown not to let player threads block on output. This
1873 let players delay shutdown indefinitely.
1874 - Fix reading of player input not to block again after update or
1875 shutdown aborted it. The bug allowed players to delay update and
1876 shutdown indefinitely.
1877 * Thread priorities are only implemented by LWP and no longer used.
1878 With LWP, they let players with a sufficiently fast connection
1879 starve out the threads that clean the lost file and kill idle
1880 connections. Drop them.
1881 * Show nuke rounded required research incorrectly.
1882 * Log unprintable characters as octal escapes rather than question
1883 marks in the journal file.
1884 * The files program no longer changes permissions of existing files.
1885 * The files program now creates all files with permissions ug=rw and
1886 all directories ug=rwx, modified by umask.
1887 * Fix a bug that could make arm, disarm and nuke detonation work with
1888 a used-up nuke instead of the armed one. This could be abused to
1889 detonate nukes multiple times. Broken in 4.3.3.
1890 * Fix nuke detonation output for zero blast radius.
1891 * Plug memory leaks in thread code.
1892 * Fix a bug that made LWP I/O wakeup unreliable.
1893 * New march sub-command v for view.
1894 * Journal was initialized before threads were, which was wrong.
1895 * Fix server not to create a journal on SIGHUP when it is disabled.
1896 * shutdown 0 now requests immediate shutdown instead of cancellation
1897 of a pending shutdown. shutdown -1 now cancels.
1898 * flash and wall no longer split long message lines.
1899 * Fix a bug in collect that screwed up a fully collected loan instead
1900 of deleting it. The screwed up loan could not be sharked or
1901 collected, but it could be repaid.
1902 * Remove the wait command, it's been broken and restricted to deity
1903 since Empire 2, ca. 1995.
1904 * Budget failed to take sector production into account for predicting
1905 unit repairs. Before 4.3.6, this bug bit only when you fooled
1906 around with budget priorities.
1907 * When unit repairs are limited by materials, the efficiency gain is
1909 * Ship repairs outside harbors and plane repairs by carriers used to
1910 consume commodities when and as far as available. Now, they
1911 consume the same fraction of the real cost of each commodity,
1912 i.e. commodity use is limited by the most scarce commodity.
1913 Neither old nor new behavior make much sense, but the new code is
1915 * Code refactoring and cleanup, in particular to make the Windows
1917 * Portability fixes.
1918 * Info file and manual page updates. All manual pages are now
1919 installed in section 6.
1921 Changes to Empire 4.3.9 - Sat Jan 6 12:42:19 UTC 2007
1922 * Fix declare to prevent the deity from changing relations for a
1923 player to self. Allow the deity to set the relations of a player
1925 * Fix arm not to put the same nuke on multiple planes (broken in
1927 * New option AUTO_POWER.
1928 * Sectors now repair allied land units.
1929 * Sectors now repair only own and allied planes.
1930 * Fix repair of planes on foreign carriers: repair allied planes,
1931 ignore the others. Before 4.3.3, carriers destroyed rather than
1932 repaired foreign planes. Since 4.3.3, foreign planes were treated
1933 as recoverable error.
1934 * Fix automatic fortification of land units to use all excess
1935 mobility even when mobility delta exceeds mobility maximum.
1936 * Disable automatic fortification of land units when MOB_ACCESS is
1937 on, because it is prohibitively slow then (broken in 4.2.13).
1938 * Budget now shows level production (tech, education, research and
1939 happiness) rounded instead of randomly rounded.
1940 * Fix update not to randomly flush small level production to zero.
1941 * Fix overly restrictive game file locking under Windows (broken in
1943 * Fix navigate to charge mobility for sweeping mines without moving
1947 Changes to Empire 4.3.8 - Fri Oct 20 18:30:28 UTC 2006
1948 * Ships no longer produce stuff when the government is broke.
1949 * Fix land unit casualties in revolts.
1950 * Fix security units not to raid friendly che.
1951 * Fix update sequence to ensure stopped sectors don't work on the
1952 ships, planes and land units in the sector. Before 4.3.6, this bug
1953 bit only when you fooled around with budget priorities.
1954 * Fix canal loading (was broken in 4.3.0).
1955 * Fix tend not to tend land units that could not be loaded.
1956 * Make xdump command available before break, but deny access to game
1958 * Lock game files to prevent concurrent access by multiple programs.
1959 fairland does not yet obey the lock.
1960 * Fix production to consider sector item limit.
1961 * Fix swapsector to update coastal flag correctly (broken in 4.3.0).
1962 * Enhanced mapping sub-commands in move, test, explore and transport.
1966 Changes to Empire 4.3.7 - Fri Jul 14 23:05:19 UTC 2006
1967 * Sanctuaries are again fully populated with civilians (4.3.6 changed
1968 the limit, but not the population). Food is now spread evenly
1970 * Fix path finder to find shortest naval and aerial paths again
1972 * transport's map sub-command now does the right thing for a unit
1974 * Fix bug in map sub-command of move, explore and transport that
1975 passed junk to map command. Could theoretically crash.
1976 * Food need reported by starvation was one short for sectors without
1978 * Change land unit ammunition use back to what it was before 4.2.3.
1979 This lets deities customize ammunition use independent of damage.
1980 It also substantially reduces ammunition consumption at high tech.
1981 * navigation and march enhancements:
1982 - Sub-command 'f' now takes an optional ship / land unit number.
1983 - Mapping sub-commands now take an optional ship / land unit
1985 - New sub-command 'd' to drop mines.
1986 * Let minesweepers retreat at their full speed (missed in 4.3.6).
1987 * SUPER_BARS cannot be harmed, so don't interdict them.
1988 * Don't let trains and non-trains march together for now, because the
1989 march code isn't prepared for that.
1990 * New mapping flag 'n' to show nukes.
1991 * Mapping flag '*' now shows nukes as well.
1992 * New command nbmap to bmap around a nuke. Overload command nmap to
1993 map around a nuke when given a nuke argument.
1994 * Fix an inconsistency that gave tactical bombers a small bonus
1995 vs. flak when pin-bombing.
1996 * Fix production to show the designation that actually produces, not
1997 the designation as it is now (broken in 4.3.6).
1998 * Fix accidental whitespace change in output of sdump, pdump and
1999 ldump that crept into 4.3.5.
2000 * Support user-defined sector types and products in custom tables,
2001 not just customization of existing ones.
2002 * Fix off-by-one bug in budget that used to be masked by budget
2003 priorities until their demise in 4.3.6. The bug could crash the
2004 game on certain systems.
2008 Changes to Empire 4.3.6 - Tue Jun 20 18:46:18 UTC 2006
2009 * The shutdown command now terminates the server process correctly
2010 even with LinuxThreads pthreads under Linux 2.4 and earlier.
2011 * Cope with old versions of groff (broken in 4.3.0).
2012 * You can now arm allied planes with nukes.
2013 * Taking a nuke off a plane gives it to the sector owner again.
2014 Feature was accidentally dropped in 4.3.3. Recipient must be
2016 * Naval path went bananas for impassable end sectors (broken in
2018 * New econfig key disabled_commands.
2019 * New territory selector dterr, restricted to deities. The territory
2020 command defaults to it for deities.
2021 * Let land units attack as long as they have positive mobility,
2022 except for high-mobility terrain (mountains), where the rules
2023 remain as they were: land units need to have all the mobility
2024 charged for the attack, not counting combat and moving in to
2025 occupy. Rationale: Making sure your land units reach attack
2026 positions with enough mobility left is a pain in the neck.
2027 Requiring only positive mobility is friendlier, but allowed rushing
2028 of mountains, so we make an exception there.
2029 * Can typeset info pages as PostScript. Result isn't exactly pretty.
2030 * Support disabling of infrastructure in infra custom table. Remove
2031 redundant option DEFENSE_INFRA. show command now shows only enabled
2033 * Fix crash on empty argument in bmap, lbmap, lmap, map, nmap, pbmap,
2034 pmap sbmap, smap (broken in 4.3.1).
2035 * New, simpler sector mobility cost formula:
2036 - The basic cost is still a linear function of sector efficiency,
2037 with customizable cost at 0% and at 100%. The latter used to be
2038 derived from the former. The show command shows both parameters
2040 - Mountains are no longer a special case.
2041 - Tweak costs: mountains now range from 2.4 to 1.2 instead of 2.174
2042 to 1.304, highway, bridge head, bridge span and bridge tower
2043 range from 0.4 to 0.001 instead of 0.2 to 0.001, and wilderness
2044 is 0.4 flat instead of 0.6 to 0.4. All sector types mortal
2045 players can designate now cost the same at 0%. That's a feature.
2046 - Road infrastructure now reduces cost up to 90%, linear in road
2047 efficiency (used to be close to that, but non-linear). Same for
2048 rail infrastructure, but 99%. Adapted from Ice World V.
2049 - Double land unit minimum cost to 0.02, to slow them down on
2051 - Change land unit cost penalty in newly taken land to an extra 0.2
2052 instead of a minimum of 0.2, to reduce penetration depth.
2053 * Reduce bridge head defense and collect value to match highway's.
2054 * sinfrastructure displayed bogus rail mobility costs when there was
2056 * Retreating engineers took full landmine damage instead of half.
2057 * Fix socket creation code not to print a null pointer.
2058 * Fix login option code not to search beyond end of table (broken in
2060 * Spy planes and satellites can no longer spot landspies.
2061 * Spy planes can now spot surface ships at sea. They can no longer
2062 spot land units loaded on ships or land units.
2063 * Fix train retreat mobility cost, and don't permit retreat off rail.
2064 * Change maximum population to 100 for plains (was 49), mountains
2065 (was 99), bridge spans and bridge towers (was 999), and to 1000 for
2066 the other habitable sector types (was 999).
2067 * Let minesweepers navigate at the speed their stats indicate by
2068 letting them sweep on the move at no extra mobility charge.
2069 * Reduce chance for planes to abort from 100-eff (if eff<80) to
2070 80-eff. This should make it easier to punch through air defense,
2071 flak in particular, and increase the risk of getting shot down.
2072 * Ship and land unit flak intensity is now proportional to efficiency.
2073 * Ship and land unit flak intensity is no longer scaled by the tech
2074 of the owner of the last thing firing. It's still scaled by each
2076 * All ships and land units firing flak now spot the plane and are
2077 spotted by the plane. Previously, spotting stopped as soon as flak
2079 * Inefficient land units were overcharged mobility when reacting.
2080 Broken when Empire3 changed land unit mobility use not to depend on
2081 efficiency, except for supply units.
2082 * New journal file to log complete player input plus selected
2083 important events. Controlled by new econfig key keep_journal, off
2085 * Fix unsafe shutdown on SIGINT and SIGTERM.
2086 * Fix land unit path finding: paths weren't always cheapest (broken
2087 in 4.0.2), and trains could be sent down paths without rail (never
2088 worked). Also fixes unit reaction path cost.
2089 * The custom table reader can now deal with sector, item, product and
2090 infra tables more comfortably.
2091 * Remove option BIG_CITY. Deities can customize the sect table to
2092 get the same effect.
2093 * Many more selectors can now be compared with names, not just
2094 numbers. This includes nations, e.g. census ?old=Mirkwood. Does
2095 not fully work for queer names like &&&.
2096 * Let land units on missions support, just like ships.
2097 * Don't let units loaded on a train react.
2098 * Change update sequence to repair ships, planes and land units after
2099 sectors produce. This makes repairs use new avail instead of old.
2100 * Let players stop and start units.
2101 * Remove budget priorities.
2102 * Make plane report easier to understand.
2103 * Change land report to show carriers in the same format as plane and
2106 * Info file and manual page fixes.
2108 Changes to Empire 4.3.5 - Sun May 28 07:49:54 UTC 2006
2109 * In conditionals, ~ compared to a string selector now stands for an
2111 * Change encoding of `not in any group' from " " to "". This makes
2112 fleet=~ work. It also affects xdump.
2113 * Fix plane capture code to clear wing.
2114 * People now eat and starve exactly the same in sectors, ships and
2115 land units. There used to be small differences, and civilians and
2116 uw loaded on land units didn't eat at all. The starvation command
2117 has been updated accordingly.
2118 * Fix bug that makes it impossible to assault or board with land
2119 units (broken in 4.3.4).
2122 Changes to Empire 4.3.4 - Thu May 25 05:46:10 UTC 2006
2123 * Don't use non-portable groff features (broken in 4.3.0).
2124 * Work around potential crash bugs in command argument access.
2125 * Plug major information leak through nation selectors (broken in
2126 4.2.21). The fix unfortunately exchanges the meaning of xdump
2127 nation and xdump country. Sorry about that.
2128 * Minimize redundancy between (mortal's) xdump nation and xdump
2130 * New nation selector rejects.
2131 * xdump nation now shows foreign relations and no longer discloses
2133 * Fix crash bug in edit.
2134 * Fix number of planes building in budget command (broken in 4.3.3).
2135 * Selectors group, fleet, wing and army are now strings, and obvious
2136 syntax like fleet#a works. xdump also shows the strings now.
2137 Units not assigned to a group currently have group string " ", but
2138 that may still change.
2139 * Don't fold conditionals to lower case, because it breaks valid
2140 conditionals like fleet#A.
2141 * Mobility cost of a plane sortie is no longer limited to current
2143 * Various formulas no longer truncate or round intermediate results.
2144 * Interdiction mission charged twice the normal mobility cost for
2146 * Fix sail not to interpret negative x-coordinates as unsail
2148 * Improved configure script.
2151 Changes to Empire 4.3.3 - Tue May 16 21:35:47 UTC 2006
2152 * power c can now show powerless countries. power c * works.
2153 * Fortresses now require 5% efficiency to return fire and interdict.
2154 * Range of ship return fire and support fire no longer depends on
2156 * Fix heap smash in login command client. Remote hole!
2157 * Properly destroy nukes on collapsing bridges. Before, you could
2158 rescue them by building a new bridge or arming them on naval
2160 * Nukes are now numbered like other units:
2161 - New selector type replaces selectors number and types.
2162 - New selector plane points to plane armed with this nuke.
2163 - New selectors effic, mobil, tech, group, opx, opy, mission,
2164 radius. Provided because all units have them; values are
2165 currently not interesting.
2166 - nuke command output redesigned.
2167 - ndump output changed subtly: nukes are no longer sorted by
2168 location, nukes in the same location no longer share id, and
2169 nukes on planes are shown.
2170 - transport nuke now works like transport plane.
2171 * arm and disarm now accept the common plane syntax, not just plane
2173 * Fix arm to let you change an armed plane's air-burst/ground-burst
2175 * territory no longer re-prompts when supplied with a bad argument,
2177 * edit lets you edit stuff that is actually computed from other
2178 state, like sector's coastal flag. This makes no sense and is now
2179 deprecated. Stuff deprecated since 4.2.15 is now gone.
2182 Changes to Empire 4.3.2 - Thu Apr 27 17:59:58 UTC 2006
2183 * Fix security units' raid at the update (broken in 4.0.0, fixed only
2184 for 100% units in 4.2.7). Back out 4.2.7's 2.5x deadliness
2185 increase. Make sure empty units don't kill anyone.
2186 * Fix bug in player_init(), which was most likely fatal on 64 bit
2187 hosts. Broken in 4.3.0.
2188 * Fix xdump not to disclose other countries' realms (new in 4.3.0).
2189 * The order in which sectors were visited for `*' arguments disclosed
2190 the real origin, fix. Mapping commands used to work around this
2191 bug, until 4.3.1 exposed it there as well.
2192 * Code didn't compile on some systems.
2193 * Fix edit plane not to truncate large values for keys 'a' and 'd'.
2195 Changes to Empire 4.3.1 - Sat Apr 15 11:40:47 UTC 2006
2196 * Fix check of game state on server startup (new in 4.3.0).
2197 * sail now accepts a destination sector.
2198 * Tend could send bogus bulletins (broken in 4.3.0).
2199 * Plug memory leaks in mission command.
2200 * Close loophole in navigate that allowed players to find all sectors
2201 that are unfriendly or inefficient harbors or bridges.
2202 * Server didn't start when default econfig was missing and user
2203 didn't supply one with -e (broken in 4.3.0).
2204 * Retreat condition 'h' (helpless) never worked, fix.
2205 * Fix retreating mine sweepers to use mobility for sweeping.
2206 * Fix retreating land units to hit mines with the same probability
2207 and to take the same damage as in normal movement. Before,
2208 hit probability was higher, and damage was lower.
2209 * Ships could retreat into sectors owned by whoever made them
2210 retreat, but not in their owner's sectors.
2211 * Fix 'm' at the movement prompt of transport and test.
2212 * Fix march and test not to apply conditionals to sectors mapped,
2213 which led to spurious error messages.
2214 * Fix break not to respect conditionals. The bug let players keep
2216 * Fix retreat code not to respect conditionals. Attackers could
2217 abuse this to suppress fleet and army retreat orders.
2218 * Fix retreat and edit to zero-terminate retreat paths.
2219 Theoretically abusable for gaining information.
2220 * Fix format string crash bugs in load, spy and bomb.
2221 * Fix the telegram editor: empty telegrams were broken in 4.2.21, and
2222 ~p before the first line of text never worked.
2223 * Fix ancient bridge building race condition that could break the
2224 test whether the player can afford the bridge.
2225 * Fix trade lot change detection in set command. Can probably be
2226 abused to defraud sellers.
2227 * The pthread code now compiles under Solaris.
2228 * navigate and march now permit any whitespace between route and
2229 optional argument for radar, lookout, sonar, not just spaces.
2230 * Fix canal navigation (was broken in 4.3.0).
2233 Changes to Empire 4.3.0 - Sun Mar 19 08:13:10 UTC 2006
2234 * version no longer pretends option SHIPNAMES still exists.
2235 * Remove files auth and ban. They could be used to restrict client
2236 address and user. Restricting user is useless, because players can
2237 send whatever they want. Banning IPs is better done with a packet
2238 filter. That leaves restricting deity IPs. Provide new econfig
2239 key privip for that. Apply it to session kill as well as login.
2240 * xdump escapes GUINEA_PIGS status:
2241 - xdump is now enabled unconditionally.
2242 - xdump sect now dumps selector coastal, because it can't be
2243 reliably computed from other xdump information.
2244 - New xdump realm and country. Realm information is now stored in
2245 a separate file, with appropriate selectors.
2246 - Reviewed for completeness and information leaks. See info xdump
2247 for remaining issues. New treaty selector uid, nat selectors
2248 relations, contacts. Removed useless selectors: news and lost
2250 - Command syntax changed.
2251 - xdump opt is no more, option information is now in xdump ver.
2252 - xdump can now dump meta-data.
2253 - Header and footer changed to be more compact. You now need
2254 meta-data to identify fields.
2256 - Documentation in doc/xdump.
2257 * New econfig key builtindir.
2258 * New econfig key custom_tables lets you customize configuration
2259 tables without recompiling. Customizing tables other than unit
2260 tables is not recommended for now. See doc/econfig for
2262 * Check configuration and game state are sane on server startup.
2263 * Remove option NONUKES and NEUTRON. Deities can load a suitable
2264 nuke table to get the same effect.
2265 * Remove option DRNUKE. Use econfig key drnuke_const to control
2266 whether nukes need research.
2267 * Disqualify land units from performing missions while loaded on
2269 * Fix dump for strings without terminating zero.
2270 * Fix login command option not to send an extra prompt.
2271 * zdone now displays information about demand update vetoing.
2272 * The Windows port now requires Winsock version 2.
2273 * Remove econfig key powe_cost.
2274 * version report now shows all the configurable settings of interest
2276 * carg and lcarg now display people as well.
2277 * ldump now dumps civ and uw as well.
2278 * Fix dangling pointer dereference in dogfighting code.
2279 * Tell sector owner when partisans take over. But don't disclose che
2281 * emp_server, files, fairland now support options -h and -v.
2282 * Simplify baroque version numbering to a single version number.
2283 This affects output of version.
2284 * New show item and show news.
2285 * New build process:
2286 - Follow the usual steps: configure; make; make install. The
2287 latter is optional. The only file deities still have to edit is
2289 - Use GNU Autoconf for system configuration.
2290 - Use GNU Make for portability and features.
2291 - Support separate build trees.
2292 - Remake out-of-date dependencies automatically.
2293 - Remake out-of-date info files automatically.
2294 - Flatten info directory.
2295 - Formatted info files are no longer distributed in source tarball.
2296 - Use LWP only with UCONTEXT. Autoconfiguring the other LWP
2297 low-level options doesn't seem to be worth the effort, as
2298 UCONTEXT should be pretty portable.
2299 * Fix use of freed memory in sail.
2300 * sail could let large ships enter big cities.
2301 * Fix reject and accept not to require contact.
2302 * Fix sharebmap and telegram to prompt for a missing first argument.
2303 * Fix report to align column research correctly for deities.
2304 * When the optional newspaper argument doesn't work because HIDDEN is
2305 enabled, complain instead of ignoring it silently.
2306 * When BLITZ is enabled, fairland no longer permutes country numbers
2307 in newcap_script so that start islands are ordered from top left to
2309 * Minimize output format differences between options:
2310 - census shows column fall regardless of FALLOUT.
2311 - show nuke now shows column res regardless of DRNUKE.
2312 - report no longer suppress column status when HIDDEN is enabled.
2313 HIDDEN limits status information like for the country command.
2314 - relations column width differed depending on option SLOW_WAR.
2315 Always use the wider format.
2316 * Fix a bug in edit that suppressed the player notification telex on
2317 military reserve change.
2318 * Fix command dispatch not to let deities use commands that are
2319 declared not to be available to them. The only command affected is
2321 * Fix the list command for visitor.
2322 * econfig key m_m_p_d no longer applies to deities.
2323 * Fix the origin command for country #0. Allow moving origin to
2324 another country's origin. Allow deities to reset origin to
2325 absolute 0,0. This turns origin into a superset of the offset
2326 command. Remove offset command.
2327 * Fix a bug that caused unpredictable flak damage when it should have
2328 been maximum damage (was broken in 4.2.19).
2329 * Don't store initial capital location, remove the associated nat
2330 selectors xstart, ystart.
2331 * Fix production command to consider resource depletion.
2332 * Fix justification of coordinate output in cutoff and mission.
2333 * Option UPDATESCHED is no longer optional. Disabling it didn't
2336 * Turn options into ordinary econfig keys.
2337 * New econfig key start_cash.
2338 * BTU regeneration now depends on the capital's work percentage.
2339 * nation now supports an optional argument that lets deities ask for
2340 somebody else's nation report.
2341 * Fix nation to display SANCTUARY instead of VISITOR for countries in
2343 * Fix capital to let you use a regained sacked capital without
2344 activating another one in between.
2345 * Don't move capital when it is sacked.
2346 * New ship capability canal, replacing obscure formula based on build
2348 * You now need a capital to request a demand update.
2349 * power now ignores landspies.
2350 * Fix LWP stack checking.
2351 * Clean up LWP, drop dead machine-specific code, fix portability bugs
2353 * census now shows the old owner instead of `*'. dump is unchanged
2354 to avoid breaking clients.
2355 * peek no longer prints the old owner.
2356 * When a bombed land unit retreated, collateral damage was applied to
2358 * paradrop, drop and fly can no longer abandon the base sector.
2359 * Tending foreign ships now sends a bulletin to the owner.
2360 * Fix bug that permitted login for inactive countries, including ""
2361 * Fix tend for spies.
2362 * Change launch to fire all missiles selected at the same target.
2363 Previously, it prompted for a new target after each missile.
2364 * add, consider, build, launch and fire no longer re-prompt when
2365 supplied with a bad argument, they just fail. Consequently, the
2366 build command no longer lets you list types you can build. It
2367 points to the show command instead.
2368 * Fix add not to truncate country number.
2369 * Fix selector coastal to be accurate at all times.
2370 * Fix obscure bug in fairland: the sector added last to an island
2371 wasn't considered coastal. Affected resource computation.
2372 * Fix sector wiping in add command.
2373 * Remove options NO_LCMS, NO_HCMS, NO_OIL. They were broken in many
2374 ways. Custom configuration tables should become a serviceable
2375 replacement eventually.
2376 * Client no longer freezes on long lines of server output.
2377 * Fix uninitialized signal mask bugs.
2378 * Fix Windows service code's treatment of -e.
2379 * Sub interdiction disclosed sub owner through news' actor selector.
2380 * country reports on all countries, but carefully limits information
2381 disclosed to mortals. Output format changed.
2382 * Market no longer forces sellers to grant loans.
2383 * Fix potential crash bug in set command. Friendlier prompt and
2385 * Substantial code cleanup and portability fixes.
2386 * Extend empfile abstraction to cover game configuration.
2387 * Overhaul of game state storage.
2388 * The above includes major contributions from Ron Koenderink. Many
2391 Changes to Empire 4.2.23 - Sun Oct 23 09:28:26 UTC 2005
2392 * Make version pretend option SHIPNAMES still exists, for the benefit
2393 of clients that still depend on it.
2394 * The change to conv in 4.2.22 could crash or compute incorrect
2396 * Info updates missing in 4.2.22.
2397 * A few code cleanups.
2399 Changes to Empire 4.2.22 - Tue Oct 11 20:23:51 UTC 2005
2400 * Log player login, logout and session kill.
2401 * Close loophole in assembly point rules that allowed players to find
2402 all unowned sectors. The assembly point must now be owned by you
2403 or an ally, or you or an ally must have a ship there.
2404 * Don't let embarked land units fire flak.
2405 * Fix display of the last connection's host when the host name was
2407 * Fix change command to accept full length representative (password),
2408 currently 19 characters. It used to chop off after eight
2410 * Non-recon missions no longer establish contact to owners of
2411 overflown sectors, because those missions do not identify the
2412 owner. This matches info Hidden.
2413 * The following events now establish contact:
2415 - Sighting a ship when toggle coastwatch is off
2416 - Spotting overflying planes
2417 - satellite spotting land units
2418 - lookout and llookout spotting ships, planes and land units
2419 - Any relations change
2420 * The country command's `temporary' state of disorder ended after
2422 * Telegram notifications could get lost in exotic circumstances,
2423 e.g. while a second client attempted to connect. Can be abused for
2425 * Remove option SNEAK_ATTACK.
2426 * Fix lboard not to let you board dead land units.
2427 * Fix stack smash in bomb, drop, fly, paradrop, recon and sail.
2429 * bomb, drop, fly, paradrop, recon and sail now deal with EOF
2431 * Fix fly to let the player abort the command at the last prompt.
2432 * Client no longer reads execute scripts in binary mode under
2434 * New econfig key listen_address.
2435 * econfig key port can now be a service name. Service empire no
2436 longer takes precedence over econfig.
2437 * Client falls back to compiled-in host only if environment doesn't
2438 supply one, not if it can't be resolved. Same for port.
2439 * Oil derrick could extract slightly more oil than was in the ground.
2440 * test command checked start sector for space and some other things
2441 instead of end sector.
2442 * convert now silently limits conversions to avoid exceeding maximum
2444 * shoot no longer limits you to 999 victims.
2445 * 4.2.19 broke pin-bombing commodities on some platforms.
2446 * Don't block on output while update is pending. This is required to
2447 ensure the update can abort commands.
2448 * Commands submitted while the update is waiting for commands to
2450 * The force command no longer waits for the specified time. It
2451 starts a scheduling thread instead, just like shutdown.
2452 * Correct grammar and punctuation in output of version.
2453 * Option SHIPNAMES is no longer optional.
2454 * Fix output of qorder and sorder for ships with sail path.
2455 * Don't change capital to agribusiness on retake. From Pat Loney.
2456 * bdes prompt for new designation was messed up for empty bmaps.
2457 * Client now supports pipes under Windows.
2458 * Care for subtle Windows socket incompatibilities.
2459 * Fix strength command not to lie about units reacting into
2461 * strength now yields the processor periodically, to keep the game
2463 * Schedule commands more fairly. Previously, a sufficiently fast
2464 player could starve out the others.
2465 * launch assumed plane maximum mobility 127 for calculating when
2466 satellites will be ready to use.
2467 * Drop support for for DCE threads.
2468 * Drop support for pthread implementations lacking pthread_kill().
2469 This includes ancient versions of OS X.
2471 * Minor info file fixes.
2472 * The above includes major contributions from Ron Koenderink. Many
2475 Changes to Empire 4.2.21 - Sat Jul 16 17:51:01 UTC 2005
2476 * Don't let threads block on output to another player thread's
2477 socket. Such blocking violates basic design assumptions and can
2478 cause all kinds of grief. In particular, it causes player session
2479 hangs under Windows with 4.2.20. Broken since the introduction of
2480 flash and asynchronous telegram notification many years ago.
2481 * Threads sleeping until a specified time could return early under
2482 Windows. This could cause double-updates.
2483 * Fix fallout damage (was broken in 4.2.19).
2484 * Fix show sector s (was broken in 4.2.19).
2485 * Fix deliver not to deliver friendly civilians into occupied
2487 * Fix mil duplication in board (was broken in 4.2.14).
2488 * Fix stack smash in lrange, shoot and execute. Remote holes, and
2489 the last one doesn't even require authentication.
2490 * Fix crash bug in emp_config parsing.
2491 * Fix buffer overruns in turn and shutdown.
2492 * Fix second argument of shutdown.
2493 * announce, pray, telegram and turn now abort on EOF.
2494 * Fix display of MOTD and game down message of maximum size.
2495 * Correctly support telnet line termination on input. Previously,
2496 carriage returns could slip into ship names and such.
2497 * Fix flash not to lie about recipients that are just logging in.
2498 * Remove obscure login command list.
2499 * Convert client from obsolete termcap to terminfo, and clean up
2501 * New fairland option -h to print usage information. Improved
2502 command line syntax diagnostics. Exit unsuccessfully on unknown
2504 * fleet and army now copy retreat orders of the fleet's or army's
2505 first member with group retreat orders in the same sector.
2506 Previously, they used the retreat orders of the first fleet or army
2507 member, which is less than useful, and failed to take ownership
2508 into account, which is an abusable bug.
2510 * Fix xdump not to disclose other countries' losses.
2511 * Fix exit status of files program when it can't create files.
2512 * Support UTF-8 encoded Unicode in human-human communications. This
2513 affects MOTD, game down message, telexes, announcements and flash
2514 messages. See new doc/unicode for technical details.
2515 * New login command `options' for client/server option negotiation.
2516 See new doc/clients-howto for technical details. The only option
2518 * emp_client -u now requests UTF-8. This requires a terminal that
2520 * Fix news for land unit defensive support.
2521 * Properly mark sea mines hit by retreating ships. Unmark mines
2523 * Fix diagnostics for unknown selector names in conditionals (was
2525 * Fix selector name clashes: rename ship selector mobquota to mquota,
2526 land selector for reaction range limit from rad to rmax.
2527 * Fix Windows services for relative file names on command line or in
2528 econfig (was broken in 4.2.20).
2529 * econfig keys ship_grow_scale, plane_grow_scale and land_grow_scale
2530 are now float. This gives deities finer control over maximum
2532 * Fix production command for sectors with 60% efficiency.
2533 * Improve syntax of read for deities.
2535 * Some info topic names differed only in case, which loses on
2536 case-insensitive file systems, and is a bad user interface even
2537 when it works. Change those names. Rename deity command hidden to
2538 peek because its info topic clashed with that of option HIDDEN.
2539 * Thanks to Doug Wescott sheep are finally covered properly in info.
2540 * Documentation fixes.
2541 * Much of the above was contributed by Ron Koenderink. Many thanks!
2543 Changes to Empire 4.2.20 - Tue Mar 22 21:07:18 UTC 2005
2544 * When units in different sectors marched, only units in the sector
2545 with the highest-numbered unit were interdicted. A marching
2546 non-spy made all marching spies visible to interdiction regardless
2548 * Fix crash when interdiction sinks second ship in a sector. Broken
2550 * Fix an ancient bug in simulation of level production that clobbered
2551 stack and could lead to low predictions, typically zero, which
2552 screwed up budget. The bug had no effect until 4.2.19.
2553 * When a sector revolts, and there wasn't enough space to liberate
2554 all uw, the number of remaining uw got the wrong sign. Broken in
2556 * Log and abort when LWP stack check detects stack smash. Server
2557 option -s no longer implies -p.
2558 * The native Windows build now supports -p and -s.
2559 * The native Windows build now properly deals with ^C when running in
2560 the foreground. It no longer prompts for a quit command on the
2562 * The meaning of server option -D in presence of -e is unclear.
2563 Other programs only support -e. Remove option -D. Use -e
2564 DIR/econfig instead of -D DIR.
2565 * New server option -v shows version information.
2566 * Fix the server's exit status with -h. Broken in 4.2.19.
2567 * The linux-pthreads build failed to shut down on signals.
2568 * Fix threading bugs in the native Windows build that made shutdown
2569 unsafe and screwed up update aborting commands.
2570 * New econfig key pre_update_hook to allow automatic, safe backup
2571 right before the update. See scripts/backup for an example.
2572 * The server now prints log messages to stderr as well when running
2574 * Fix potential buffer overflows in logerror() and lwpStatus().
2575 * Server now requires POSIX signals. It no longer catches SIGUSR1.
2576 * Remove support for ancient versions of HP-UX.
2577 * Fix seeding of PRNG broken in 4.2.19.
2578 * Don't reseed the PRNG in commands, it hurts randomness and could be
2579 abused by crafty players.
2580 * The server now makes the data directory its working directory.
2581 This also gets rid of a bug that changed the file name of the
2582 sector, power, nation and lostitems file unless econfig could not
2584 * The server now writes a pid file. Thanks to Daniel O'Connor.
2585 * More user friendly server startup: more errors are detected while
2586 the server still runs in the foreground, which makes it possible to
2587 complain to stderr and to exit unsuccessfully.
2588 * Early log messages went to the log file in the default data
2589 directory, even though econfig specifies another data directory.
2590 * Specifying an econfig file on the command line that can't be read
2592 * Errors in econfig are now fatal.
2593 * The server now refuses to start when it can't open data files.
2594 * News are now sorted and expire sanely.
2595 * Conditionals can now compare strings as well.
2596 * Corrupted down and motd files could cause buffer overflows.
2597 * Fix recon to let player abort at the flight path prompt.
2598 * power no longer rounds worldwide numbers for deities.
2599 * power command failed to recognize deities with non-zero country
2601 * Change output of production command so that columns are aligned
2602 even for large values. Replace column wkfc by more useful column
2604 * neweff and production miscalculated work when mil exceeded
2606 * neweff miscalculated work when the population limit exceeded 999.
2607 * Fix capping of avail when a big city is torn down.
2608 * Fix a bug in fire that allowed players to find all submarine UIDs.
2609 * Maximum sector population is no longer hardcoded, and now covered
2610 by xdump. Option RES_POP now affects mountains and plains as
2611 well. From Ray Hyatt.
2612 * Fix fina and news not to ignore errors in conditions.
2613 * The native Windows build now requires Windows Sockets 2.
2614 * The native Windows build now supports multiple instances of the
2615 service. The ability to supply additional startup parameters to
2616 the service has been removed.
2617 * Implement fairland command line parsing under Windows.
2618 * Improved fairland and emp_server usage message.
2620 * Minor info file and documentation fixes.
2621 * Much of the above was contributed by Ron Koenderink. Many thanks!
2623 Changes to Empire 4.2.19 - Thu Dec 23 20:24:24 UTC 2004
2624 * Fix order not to unload into full sectors.
2625 * Fix scrap not to dump stuff into full sectors. Excess stuff is now
2627 * Fix distribute not to conjure up a civilian when importing
2628 civilians from a dist center that doesn't have any.
2629 * Fix flak to resupply no more shells than actually needed.
2630 * Fix rounding error in shoot that could result in more people shot
2631 than actually there.
2632 * Fix info and apro error handling. In particular, do not leak
2633 potentially sensitive information on the server to players.
2634 * info no longer shows a random matching page when the topic argument
2635 is ambiguous. Instead, it lists all matching topics.
2636 * Embarked land units and overflying planes no longer spot each
2638 * Fix show command to show only sectors that players can designate
2639 (was broken in 4.2.18).
2640 * Fix a rounding error in production command column `max'.
2641 * Fix production command for overpopulated mountains and plains.
2642 * Fix tradeship ally cut to match documentation.
2643 * Fix plague, which was was broken in 4.2.14: it got stuck in stage I.
2644 * Fix a bug in aerial sonar where ships could mask submarines with
2645 the same number modulo 256.
2646 * Don't allow bombing of subs that were not detected.
2647 * MOTD and the game down message are now entirely separate: use `turn
2648 motd' for the MOTD, and `turn on' and `turn off' for the game down
2649 message. `turn on' no longer lets you edit the MOTD.
2650 * Remove option NUKEFAILDETONATE.
2651 * Option ORBIT is no longer optional.
2652 * New option GUINEA_PIGS to control experimental stuff not ready for
2653 prime time. If your deity enables this in a serious game, run!
2654 * Many xdump fixes. xdump is now enabled by option GUINEA_PIGS.
2655 * New ship and land selectors rflags, rpath.
2656 * New ship selectors for order: xstart. xend, ystart, yend,
2657 cargostart, cargend, amtstart, amtend
2658 * New ship selectors for sail: mobquota, path, follow.
2659 * New news selector uid.
2660 * Implement command line parsing under Windows where it was missing.
2661 * emp_server and and files print a usage message on command line
2663 * Fix how emp_server exits after being panicked by a signal. It can
2664 now dump core when this happens.
2665 * Fix bug in client that could crash it when a line of input starts
2667 * Client now gets user name from environment variable LOGNAME if set,
2669 * The native Windows build can now run as a service.
2670 * Redirecting client input now works under Windows.
2672 * Don't confuse work with loyalty in info Citizens.
2673 * Minor info file and manual page fixes.
2674 * Much of the above was contributed by Ron Koenderink and Marc
2675 Olzheim. Many thanks!
2677 Changes to Empire 4.2.18 - Tue Sep 7 14:08:59 UTC 2004
2678 * Fix info to accept abbreviated arguments under Windows. From Ron
2680 * Buying planes or land units loaded on something didn't work when
2681 that something moved.
2682 * Fix a bug that could produce update cascades with update policy
2684 * Fix delivery and distribution to grant packing bonus only to
2685 efficient sectors, just like move. Previously, delivery ignored
2686 efficiency, and distribution behaved as if it were an efficient
2687 sector without special bonuses.
2688 * New sector selectors loyal, access; ship selectors radius, access,
2689 xbuilt, ybuilt, builder, name; plane selectors radius, access,
2690 theta; land unit selectors radius, react, nland, access; lost
2692 * Fix sector selectors che, che_target; plane selectors att, def;
2693 nuke selector types; treaty selector exp; news selector time;
2694 commodity selectors type, xbuy, ybuy.
2695 * Option PLANENAMES is no longer optional.
2696 * Ensure config parameter variables and their description in
2697 configkeys[] are consistent. Inconsistencies there caused bugs in
2698 the past. From Marc Olzheim.
2699 * Complain if econfig file can't be read.
2700 * Better messages for errors in econfig file.
2701 * Remove unused econfig keys hard_tech and last_demand_update.
2702 * New econfig key news_keep_days to configure news expiry.
2703 * New econfig key anno_keep_days to configure announcement expiry.
2704 * Fix announcement expiry. It leaked file descriptors and memory,
2705 and could corrupt the anno file. From Ron Koenderink.
2706 * New command xdump: experimental extended dump. Disabled for now.
2707 * Bankers no longer round down debts, and they collect interest for
2708 the time debtors are idling at sub-prompts.
2709 * Loan interest calculation was broken at the due date and after a
2710 last payment made at the due date. With luck, debtors could abuse
2711 this to repay loans cheap (they couldn't gain cash, though), sharks
2712 to purchase loans cheap, and creditors to collect excessively.
2713 * Fix major bug in transport that allowed two cooperating countries
2715 * Don't report interdiction damage twice when transporting planes.
2716 * Fix message for attempting to transport a plane in a sector not
2717 owned by the player.
2718 * Fix confusing diagnostics when refusing to improve defense because
2719 option DEFENSE_INFRA is off.
2720 * Simplify confusing code in budget.
2721 * Fix spacing in output of budget and show.
2722 * Change one-way plane sorties to match ordinary sorties: offer
2723 carriers regardless of the sector they're in, require carriers to
2726 * Don't print owner of incoming missile twice when intercepting it.
2727 * Simplify constituent storage in product characteristics.
2728 * Replace remaining `variables' leftovers; mainly in unit
2730 * Remove leading spaces in deity unit dumps.
2731 * Replace inappropriate uses of compile time constant ETUS by 60.
2732 Deities don't change ETUS, they change etu_per_update by editing
2733 econfig. This nonsense dates back at least to chainsaw 3.31.
2734 * Change ship production (fishing and drilling for oil) to match
2735 sector production. Ship efficiency and tech are now relevant, and
2736 all people on board work. From Ron Koenderink.
2738 * Minor info file fixes.
2740 Changes to Empire 4.2.17 - Mon Aug 16 16:21:53 UTC 2004
2741 * Fix seeding of PRNG under Windows. The bug made updates occur at
2742 a predictable time in the update window. From Ron Koenderink.
2743 * Close major loophole in drop that allowed players to determine
2744 whether an arbitrary sector is sea, allied land, or other land.
2745 * fly could fly civilians into occupied sectors. For consistency
2746 with other means to move around stuff, this is no longer possible.
2747 * Don't allow flying to a carrier that doesn't have space for the
2748 planes. Previously, planes that did this were teleported home,
2749 which could be abused.
2750 * Close loophole in bomb that allowed players to find all
2752 * Fix move and explore not to crash when moving civilians to a sector
2753 without civilians, and interdiction destroys them all. Found and
2754 debugged by Jeff Cotter.
2755 * Fix printing of messages entered with turn command. '%' characters
2756 could cause havoc, even crashes.
2757 * Use sector's actual maximum population to compute chance of plague
2758 outbreak. Previously, code used 9999 for big cities and 999 for
2759 other sectors, and info Plague said 999. This makes all crowded
2760 sectors equally vulnerable, even mountains, plains, and inefficient
2762 * Oil derricks no longer drill and deplete more oil than they can
2763 hold. From Ron Koenderink.
2764 * Version 4.2.15's coordinate and list parsing fixes reject trailing
2765 junk. That's too strict. Silently ignore trailing junk as long as
2766 it starts with whitespace.
2767 * Version 4.2.15's selector rewrite broke some type literals,
2768 e.g. `?des=n' was interpreted as `?des=newdes'. Change to prefer
2769 type literals to selectors.
2770 * Nightly build patches game to get repeatable PRNG results. From
2773 Changes to Empire 4.2.16 - Wed Jun 16 18:56:16 UTC 2004
2774 * Previous version broke sector production when part of the work is
2775 used for sector construction. Fix courtesy Jeff Cotter.
2776 * Add rudimentary tests to nightly build. From Marc Olzheim.
2778 Changes to Empire 4.2.15 - Wed May 26 17:55:58 UTC 2004
2779 * test command no longer asks whether to abandon the sector.
2780 * explore command could generate a bogus `lost' record when it
2781 regains an abandoned start sector.
2782 * edit command now properly updates stats when editing tech level of
2783 ships, planes or land units. A few of these stats can be edited
2784 separately, which doesn't make much sense, and is now deprecated.
2785 * edit command no longer accepts efficiency values that would destroy
2786 the edited unit. Deities can still delete units by setting the
2788 * upgrade command used to charge an amount of avail that didn't match
2789 info upgrade. Neither the implemented nor the documented amount
2790 made much sense. Change it to 15% of the full build cost. Rewrite
2792 * Commands upgrade and build could be off by one when reporting
2794 * upgrade command reported rounded cost but charged unrounded
2795 cost. Round cost of upgrade down to match behavior of build.
2796 * Upgrading planes now preserves range when it is less than the
2797 maximum range. It used to set it to the new maximum range.
2798 * show bridge and show tower no longer claim bridge building requires
2799 `workers' (whatever that is), since it doesn't.
2800 * Replace option ROLLOVER_AVAIL by econfig parameter
2801 rollover_avail_max, which is the maximum amount of avail that rolls
2802 over. Previously, avail was limited after rollover, and even when
2803 ROLLOVER_AVAIL was off. Fix that.
2804 * Ships weren't always charged mobility for firing with option
2806 * Fix shell use of return torpedoes.
2807 * designate no longer complains twice about deity only designations.
2808 * Ensure designate zaps efficiency only when sector type really
2810 * Fix strength to always report mines to deities.
2811 * Remove option SHIP_DECAY.
2812 * Fix bug in sonar that could crash or yield unpredictable results
2813 near the true origin.
2814 * Fix buffer overflow in flash and wall.
2815 * Fix wall not to strip out first word of message.
2816 * Change market and order to use item types instead of mnemo
2817 characters internally.
2818 * Market now reports sales with full item names instead of single
2820 * buy now requires first argument to be an item name, as documented.
2821 * production command handled production backlog incorrectly, failed
2822 to limit production for production efficiency greater than one,
2823 e.g. agribusiness, and incorrectly limited raw material
2824 consumption. Also fix a rounding error. With help from Ron
2826 * Sector work was accidentally truncated to even.
2827 * Fix coordinate parsing for large numbers when WORLD_X or WORLD_Y
2828 don't divide SHRT_MAX+1.
2829 * Properly diagnose over-long unit lists.
2830 * Rewrite selector code. Old code let players smash the stack by
2831 supplying too many conditions. New code properly rejects ambiguous
2832 abbreviations and prefers exact matches. Selectors with names that
2833 collide with types, like land units' rad and spy, now work.
2834 Selectors with non-integral values, like land units' att, now work.
2835 * survey used to display hundreds for everything but variables. Now
2836 it displays hundreds only for values that can be large.
2837 * Rewrite info survey. Document ability to survey properties other
2838 than items and resources.
2839 * Rewrite info build, since it was inaccurate and poorly structured.
2840 * Fix info fire on required military. From Marc Olzheim.
2841 * New fairland argument -R to set the PRNG seed. Print the seed.
2842 This allows you to recreate the same world again.
2843 * New facilities to deal with internal errors. These crash when the
2844 server is started with -d, which is appropriate for debugging, and
2845 potentially disastrous for running a real game.
2846 * Automated nightly builds.
2849 Changes to Empire 4.2.14 - Mon Mar 22 09:04:12 UTC 2004
2850 * Options NEWPOWER, NEW_STARVE and NEW_WORK are no longer optional.
2851 * Gripe about unknown options in econfig.
2852 * Remove option GRAB_THINGS.
2853 * Utility program files takes new option -f.
2854 * Remove utility programs land, ore and perfect, which don't compile
2855 since 4.2.0 (Oct '98).
2856 * fairland no longer warns when it added resources, but when it
2858 * Fallout code could claim destruction of more items than actually
2860 * Fix recursive resupply (resupply from supply land unit triggering a
2861 resupply of the land unit) when just testing for how much can be
2862 resupplied. The bug could have led to insufficient resupply.
2863 * Fix recursive resupply not to consume all fuel in supply units. No
2864 supply units consuming fuel exist in the stock game.
2865 * Limit delivery and distribution thresholds to ITEM_MAX (9999).
2866 Distribution threshold were previously limited to 10000, and
2867 delivery thresholds to 65528.
2868 * Limit items in sectors to ITEM_MAX (9999). Commands give and buy
2869 used to limit to 9990. Market transactions and commands explore,
2870 move, drop and fly to 32767. Limiting in autonav code (order
2871 command) didn't work. Item delivery used to stop at 9990,
2872 distribution at 9999. Food growing and sector production used to
2873 stop at 9999. Grind, assault lunchboxes, demobilization, mine
2874 sweeping and che liberating uw could theoretically attempt to
2875 increase items beyond 65535, which would have been ignored
2876 (destroying the increase).
2877 * Properly saturate fallout at FALLOUT_MAX (9999). Previously,
2878 fallout increases behaved inconsistently. Increases beyond 65535
2879 could get ignored, or fallout could saturate at 9999, or it could
2880 overflow at 65536 (that would take quite some nuking, though).
2881 * Properly saturate mines at MINES_MAX (65535). Previously, a mining
2882 operation that would have gone beyond 65535 was ignored.
2883 * Fix `are we loading or unloading' tests for load, unload, lload and
2885 * Fix editing of land unit attack and defense values. Implement
2886 editing of ship defense values. Contributed by Ron Koenderink.
2887 * edit now edits che number and target separately.
2888 * Fix edit to properly extend unit files. Contributed by Ron
2890 * Major internal reorganisation: Sectors need space for items,
2891 deliveries and distribution thresholds. To save space, the
2892 ancients invented `variables': a collection of key-value pairs,
2893 missing means zero value, space for `enough' keys. This
2894 complicates the code, as assigning to a `variable' can fail for
2895 lack of space. Over time, `enough' increased, and for quite some
2896 time now `variables' have been *wasting* space. Replace them,
2897 except in unit characteristics, where they are read-only, and will
2898 be replaced later. This also removes misfeatures like plague
2899 outbreaks silently deleting deliveries.
2900 * Remove disabled commands dissolve and mult. Remove configuration
2901 parameters minmult and maxmult.
2902 * trade command indexed an array out of bounds when attempting to
2903 display the plague as commodity. Fix.
2904 * New make goal interix. Contributed by Ron Koenderink.
2905 * The type selector now prefers an exact match to a partial match.
2906 ?type=sb now selects sb, not sbc, even when sbc happens to be found
2908 * Value of selector sell was always zero, remove it.
2909 * Clean up selector code.
2910 * satellite now displays all sectors owned by other players, and none
2911 else. It used to display all but sea, mountains, sanctuaries,
2912 wasteland and wilderness.
2913 * map commands now display wilderness and plains owned by other
2914 players as '?'. Radar commands now display all wilderness and
2916 * Fix power timestamp for Windows. Contributed by Ron Koenderink.
2917 * Make client abort the current command on ^C under Windows, as
2918 everywhere else. Contributed by Ron Koenderink.
2919 * Command line parser interpreted trailing whitespace as an another
2920 (empty) argument. Ignore it instead.
2921 * Properly declare stuff in headers, include proper system headers.
2922 Remove all nested external declarations. Source code is now fully
2923 prototyped. Enable appropriate gcc warnings.
2924 * Fix several type errors. Some may have been show-stoppers on big
2925 endian machines where sizeof(long) != sizeof(int).
2926 * Remove pre-ISO C compatibility cruft (hey, it's been only fifteen
2928 * Various portability fixes. Some bugs may have been show-stoppers
2929 when sizeof(long) != sizeof(int). With help from Marc Olzheim and
2931 * Move some code to more logical places. Remove some unused code,
2932 some of which was hard to port.
2933 * The files program could print error messages to a log file in some
2934 circumstances. Make it print to stderr.
2935 * deliver can now change direction without changing the threshold.
2936 * deliver now provides appropriate context when prompting for
2938 * Login command play no longer ignores up to two arguments if there
2940 * Fix payoff (was broken in 4.2.13).
2941 * Capability fish didn't work together with capability oil.
2942 * Fix and clarify plague outbreak chance in info Plague.
2943 * Fix RES_POP maximum population in info Research.
2944 * Fix info telegram and info announce on ~ escapes.
2945 * Update info Selector to match code.
2946 * Document all undocumented unit capabilities and stats.
2947 * Document submarines' ability to carry landspies.
2948 * Fix info shoot on security units.
2949 * Various small info file fixes.
2950 * Many fixes in the troff macro package for info files.
2951 * Many fixes for translating info files to HTML.
2952 * Many info file markup fixes.
2954 Changes to Empire 4.2.13 - Fri Feb 13 22:12:36 UTC 2004
2955 * Source code reindented and cleaned up somewhat.
2956 * Various small info file fixes.
2957 * Fixed change requiring 254 BTUs even when not charging any
2959 * Fixed tactical non-marine missile crash.
2960 * Fixed spy unit detection chance for eff<100.
2961 * Fixed output of sorder.
2962 * `edit' can now work non-interactively. Contributed by Ron
2964 * Fixed and extended edit for sectors.
2965 * Fixed use of errno.
2966 * Minor security fix: doconfig now writes example auth entry as
2968 * Fixed reading of country name and password in client for Windows.
2969 * Replace use of some obsolete non-portable library functions by
2970 portable equivalents.
2971 * designate now warns about redesignated capital only when it
2972 succeeds in redesignating the capital.
2973 * attack could be off by one when reporting required unit mobility.
2974 * Fixed command matching. Unique prefixes were not always
2975 recognized, and junk suffixes were ignored.
2976 * Removed bestdistpath. bestpath yields the same results.
2977 * Renamed lstats to lstat for consistency and to match info page.
2978 * Fixed non-portable fd_set * arguments of select().
2979 * New `map' flag `h' to highlight own sectors. Contributed by Marc
2981 * Fixed `sabo' reporting damage to player in deity coordinates.
2982 * New option ROLLOVER_AVAIL. Contributed by Drake Diedrich.
2983 * Fix Windows server shutdown on reading "quit" from stdin.
2984 * Land units now fortify automatically when mobility plus growth
2985 exceeds the maximum. With code from Marc Olzheim.
2986 * Wandering che are less predictable.
2987 * Land units no longer regenerate mobility faster while it is
2989 * Fixed emp_client -k.
2990 * No longer allow pirates to ferret out where a ship was built.
2991 * Fixed map commands to reject bmap flags `t' and `r' instead of
2993 * Fixed lmine shell resupply.
2994 * News no longer call all sub-launched missiles nuclear.
2995 * Incoming missiles are now reported with coordinates.
2996 * Removed some code that served no purpose except crashing on
2998 * Fixed Mac OSX and AIX build problems.
2999 * Don't resolve player IP addresses for now, because it can crash
3000 with certain versions of GNU libc.
3001 * Fixed recording of lost nukes.
3003 Changes to Empire 4.2.12 - Mon Aug 18 16:54:21 MDT 2003
3004 * Corrected contact information for Wolfpack.
3005 * Sector isn't abandoned until move or explore is complete.
3006 * Fixed multiple cases where return value of getstarg() was
3007 used without being checked which crashed the server.
3008 * Used stdarg.h instead of varargs.h.
3009 * Call only_subs and save result before mission frees attacker
3010 list. Call with free list could cause server crash.
3011 * Fixed spy sat map for units on opposite side of world wrap.
3012 * Don't sleep in main thread when called from signal handler.
3013 * Fixed error checking in pthreads.
3014 * Properly detach pthreads.
3015 * Pass unlocked mutex to pthread_mutex_unlock.
3016 * Cope with interrupted sleep in pthread empth_sleep to prevent
3018 * Added server configurable update window.
3019 * Initialized variables passed to setsockopt in accept.c.
3020 * Fixed bug where sharing bmap with uncontacted country crashes
3023 Changes to Empire 4.2.11 - Sun Sep 1 09:54:59 MDT 2002
3024 * Added compile option for the Mac OSX architecture.
3025 * Fixed bug in cargo where unit array was indexed by shp_maxno
3026 instead of lnd_maxno.
3027 * Fixed bug in reject where aborting the command crashes the
3029 * Can't buy land units into enemy headquarters.
3030 * Added sabotage command and commando unit.
3031 * Spies moving by themselves will not trigger interdiction.
3032 * Fixed error in map distance calculation that caused errant
3034 * Ships going under -127 mobility will be set to -127 mob and
3035 not roll over to positive mobility.
3036 * Corrected plane cost in info Maintenance.
3037 * Changed error message for loans rejected for being too big.
3038 * Land units will take casualty damage proportional to their
3039 ability to carry mil.
3040 * Fixed bug where "route i *" crashes server.
3041 * Cannot upgrade planes in orbit.
3042 * Fixed bug in declare with deity aborting command at last
3043 prompt crashes the server.
3044 * Coastwatch notify works with NO_FORT_FIRE option.
3045 * Thread that kills idle connection will charge player for
3046 minutes the player was logged on.
3047 * Removed separate sendeof at end of execute from emp_client
3048 that logged players off on certain platforms.
3049 * Updated player idle counter during read prompt so players
3050 wouldn't be kicked off during long flashes or writing telegrams.
3051 * LOSE_CONTACT will work as advertised.
3052 * Allied units marching through 0 mobility conquered sectors
3053 are charged at least LND_MINMOBCOST.
3055 Changes to Empire 4.2.10 - Mon Aug 13 14:34:39 MDT 2001
3056 * Assault can reinforce own sector when SLOW_WAR is enabled.
3057 * emp_client no longer converts lines into tags but still verifies executes,
3058 pipes, and file redirect match players input.
3059 * Added pboard command to capture enemy planes in your territory.
3060 * Declaring war when at Sitzkrieg won't return relations to Mobilizing.
3061 * Declaring war won't charge money if you're already Mobilizing.
3062 * Added multiple territory fields.
3063 * "show nuke build" displays the proper avail.
3064 * retreating land units will only retreat to sectors owned by the player
3066 * added hard cap of "250 + easy" to limit_level.
3067 * education p.e. calculation divides edu constant by etu per update.
3068 * Added patch for Linux for the PowerPC.
3070 Changes to Empire 4.2.9 - Sun Jan 7 15:49:13 PST 2001
3071 * Fixed data corruption when bogus target gets fired upon.
3072 * Increased size of ancillary stacks to prevent stack overflow.
3073 * Changed all references to empire.cx.
3074 * Ships, planes, and land units lost to lack of maintenance will now be
3076 * No longer allowed to sack deity's capital.
3077 * Accuracy calculation in land unit support was backwards.
3078 * Corrected formula for likelihood of plague in info Plague.
3079 * Fixed files to correctly size map and bmap files from econfig file.
3080 * No longer allowed to add country 0. It corrupts deity country.
3082 Changes to Empire 4.2.8 - Mon Oct 9 17:35:35 MDT 2000
3083 * Fixed range in radar.t and Sector-types.t. Maximum range at infinite
3085 * Changed so that player can't drop civilians into occupied sectors.
3086 * Fixed bug that crashes update if etus/update is less than 8.
3087 * Fixed sometimes not reporting overflights
3088 * Fixing flak for units/ships to be in all sectors as they should be
3089 * Updated order of firing flak in Flak.t.
3090 * Fixed 80% efficient planes on ships must be maintained.
3091 * Fixed initial MOB_ACCESS check thread sleep time was set by an uninitialized
3093 * Removed "TEMPORARILY DISABLED" message from mission command for escort
3094 missions. Escort missions have been re-enabled since 4.0.15.
3095 * Using sonar from the navigate command will print the sonar map.
3096 * Eliminated annoying error messages when using navigate with conditionals.
3097 * Fixed Technology.t to correctly add 1 before taking the logarithm.
3098 * Fixed bug that allowed players to steal opponents maps.
3099 * Put time limit for bidding on market and trade in econfig file.
3100 * Moved hours file information into econfig file.
3101 * Added comments on setting update policy in econfig file.
3102 * Added logging of cases where write extends data file by more than one id.
3103 * Option MARKET is turned off by default.
3105 Changes to Empire 4.2.7 - Fri Mar 10 18:41:04 PST 2000
3106 * Added new NF_SACKED flag to indicate when a country has had it's
3107 capital sacked. This flag is only cleared when the country actively
3108 redesignates it's capital using the "capital" command, and changed
3109 capital.t to reflect this (no more re-sacking after an update if the
3110 country doesn't reset and repeating until they are out of cash.)
3111 * Added land unit to edit command for planes.
3112 * Added nuketype to edit command for planes.
3113 * Changed so that if the leader of a group of units is a train, the
3114 railways are used for bestpath instead of roadways.
3115 * Changed mission command to also print reaction radius of reserve
3116 missions when set for land units.
3117 * Changed Flak.t to reflect guns having to be loaded onto a land unit
3119 * Changed so that visitor countries cannot change their name or password.
3120 * Changed so that you cannot upgrade deity planes, ships or units.
3121 * Changed so that you know where missions are flown from.
3122 * Changed so that the airport owner you fly a mission from is informed.
3123 * Changed so that preperations for takeoff are reported to the owner of
3124 the sector, ship or unit a plane is taking off from if it is not owned
3125 by the owner of the plane.
3126 * Changed so that when a sector reverts during a guerrilla revolt, the
3127 mobility is not reset. When MOB_ACCESS is not enabled, this used to mean
3128 you would always get at least an updates worth of mobility. With
3129 MOB_ACCESS, sectors that reverted during the update were useless, since you
3130 got no mobility for a long time. This fixes that problem, and makes che
3131 more useful as well.
3132 * Changed so that air defense missions don't always send up every plane in the
3133 area, but instead always send up at most two times the number of incoming
3134 planes (for each interdicting country.) This helps to stop 1 plane from
3135 stripping the mobility from 25 air defense planes all at once, but doesn't
3136 limit it to n+1 as there is for regular interception.
3137 * Clarified deity reversion of sectors in Sector-ownership.t
3138 * Clarified production efficiency and added pointer to "show sector cap"
3140 * Clarified nuketype selector for planes in Selector.t
3141 * Clarified that fortifying units does not affect mission status in info
3142 pages for mission and fortify.
3143 * Clarified fuel syntax upon error in fuel command in empmod.c.
3144 * Cleaned up comments causing minor complaints in some builds.
3145 * Fixed bug in loans where you could collect on proposed loans.
3146 * Fixed production command to be more accurate (though it *still* has some
3147 rounding errors, it's better.)
3148 * Fixed potential memory leak in air defense missions.
3149 * Fixed bug where you couldn't pinbomb some commodities if other commodities
3150 didn't already exist in the sector.
3151 * Fixed bug where you couldn't build 0 crew planes without military in the
3152 sector. (This is different from needing at least 1 military to build all
3153 planes that need a crew which introduced another related bug earlier.)
3154 * Fixed bug where scrapping land unit 0 could cause erroneous transfer
3155 messages to be displayed for deity owned planes.
3156 * Fixed bug where land units on ships in a sector taken over were blown
3158 * Fixed bug where planes on ships in a sector taken over were blown up
3160 * Fixed bug in sdump printing origx and origy in deity coordinates.
3161 * Fixed bug in satellites showing wrong sectors (sometimes) when using the
3163 * Fixed bug in launch showing wrong satellite target (showed asat instead
3164 of the target satellite.)
3165 * Fixed bug where you could gain information not normally available using
3166 the "fire" command to determine sector type information.
3167 * Fixed bug in market/trade creating extra money when loans are taken out.
3168 * Fixed problem with land units not being reported sunk after being sunk
3169 on a ship that was nuked or wastelanded in a sector.
3170 * Fixed problem with Spies.t using "llook" instead of "llookout".
3171 * Fixed problem in lwp/arch.c including jmp_buf.h instead of setjmp.h
3172 on some Linux boxes.
3173 * Fixed problem with plague infection being way too high in cities when
3174 the BIG_CITY option is enabled.
3175 * Fixed bug in edit command getting confused with arguments.
3176 * Fixed bug in ask_move_in_off asking you to move in a negative number of
3177 troops (hey, it could happen. :) )
3178 * Fixed bug in add command not keeping flags or relations initially correct.
3179 * Fixed bug in torpedo command sometimes telling victim about torpedo
3180 sightings even when way out of range.
3181 * Fixed bug in spy command not reporting planes in adjacent sectors, as well
3182 as not formatting them properly when reporting them.
3183 * Fixed bug in satellite with noisy transmission causing a potential
3184 crash of the server with non-100% efficient satellites.
3185 * Fixed potential crashing of the server during satellite display when not
3186 calculating distances to ships and units correctly.
3187 * Fixed bug where planes in non-allied sectors, ships and units could be
3189 * Fixed bug where planes on the trading block could be used on missions.
3190 * Fixed bug where planes and units that get traded don't have mobility set
3191 correctly when using MOB_ACCESS option.
3192 * Fixed bug which made security units virtually useless.
3193 * Fixed access times and mobility not being set right when building planes,
3194 ships, units, bridges and bridge towers when MOB_ACCESS is enabled.
3195 * Fixed minor formatting problem with launch of satellites.
3196 * Fixed minor formatting problem with planes with greater than 999 tech.
3197 * Fixed minor formatting problem with ships with greater than 999 tech.
3198 * Fixed problem with "llook" showing up in TOP info file.
3199 * Fixed problem with lwp Makefile choking on NT builds with clean target.
3200 * General cleanup of potentially ambiguous statements.
3202 Changes to Empire 4.2.6 - Fri Jun 4 05:55:20 PDT 1999
3203 * Added "TECH_POP" as an option where technology costs more to make
3204 as your population grows past 50K civilians. It is disabled by
3206 * Changed "produce" command to accurately print what the true p.e. is.
3207 * Changed "update" command to display if mobility updating is enabled for
3209 * Fixed bug where toggling off the coastwatch flag also turned off
3210 forts firing on hostile ships coming into range.
3211 * Fixed bug where assaulting your own land would violate any treaties
3212 you have where assaults are a violation.
3213 * Fixed bug where all planes (even those without need for a crew, such
3214 as missiles) needed at least 1 military to build.
3215 * Fixed bug where when a ship sinks during the update due to lack of maint,
3216 land units and planes on it were left stranded.
3217 * Fixed bug where when a land unit dies during the update due to lack of
3218 maint, land units and planes on it were left stranded on it.
3219 * Fixed bug where nukes could be lost due to MOB_ACCESS updating mobility
3221 * Fixed bug in "show sector capabilities" not showing products correctly.
3222 * Fixed bug in "show tower build" printing "bridges" instead of "bridge
3224 * Fixed bug in sectors that don't revolt not showing up as lost items.
3225 * Fixed bug where maps with an X of exactly 200 is not drawing third line.
3226 * Fixed bug where MOB_ACCESS was not updating the mobility just before
3228 * Fixed bug in the way treaties are examined and sometimes produce
3230 * Fixed edit to allow creating negative mobility for sectors.
3231 * Fixed setsector to allow creating negative mobility for sectors.
3232 * Fixed bug where when writing out the value of a sector that had
3233 negative mobility and was damaged in combat, mobility was being
3235 * Fixed Taxes.t info page to reflect that captured civvies only pay
3237 * Fixed Technology.t info page to reflect TECH_POP option.
3238 * Fixed navigate.t info page to reflect that only ships in the fleet
3239 in the same sector that are fired upon have damage divided up.
3240 * Made techlists toggle on by default (so things are shown in order of
3241 technological advances.)
3243 Changes to Empire 4.2.5 - Mon Mar 1 06:42:24 PST 1999
3244 * Added optimization to increasing mobility to check if an object is
3245 already at max mob, just return since it can't be increased.
3246 * Added "-ltermcap" for client libs for hp build (it was already in
3248 * Added clearing of telegram flags after the update so that the next
3249 telegram is flagged as new and not part of the update.
3250 * Fixed Update-sequence.t to reflect MOB_ACCESS.
3251 * Fixed bug where fortification amount was not being limited to
3252 maximum mobility for land units (land_mob_max).
3253 * Fixed bug where land unit fortification strength was being calculated
3254 by using 127 instead of land_mob_max.
3255 * Fixed bug where scrapping land units was creating military.
3256 * Fixed description of sect_mob_neg_factor in econfig file.
3257 * Increased speed of PT boats.
3259 Changes to Empire 4.2.4 - Tue Feb 2 05:47:44 PST 1999
3260 * Added check to make military values match up correctly for land
3262 * Fixed bug in doconfig not putting ipglob.c in the right place.
3263 * Fixed bug where attacking deity sectors will violate a treaty.
3264 * Fixed newspaper.t information file.
3265 * Fixed potential bug in fixing up timestamp information when restarting a
3266 game with MOB_ACCESS turned on.
3267 * Fixed bug in explore command not setting mobility to correct
3268 value when MOB_ACCESS was enabled.
3269 * Fixed bug in enlist setting mobility incorrectly sometimes.
3270 * Added doc/backup file for deities which recommends how backups and
3271 restores of the data directory should be done.
3273 Changes to Empire 4.2.3 - Wed Jan 13 06:02:35 PST 1999
3274 * Added linux-pthreads target and build for using pthreads under Linux.
3275 * Added NO_FORT_FIRE option which disables the ability of forts to
3277 * Added more error checking and recovery for corrupt data files.
3278 * Changed alphapos target to alpha-pthreads for better clarity.
3279 * Changed fairland to allow 0 sector distance to other islands and
3280 continents (James Risner)
3281 * Changed "frg" and "dam" land unit stats to "rng" and "fir" so they
3282 match the way ships are described (since this is how they really work.)
3283 * Changed Unit-types.t to now describe "rng" as firing range of a unit,
3284 and "fir" as the number of guns that a land unit fires.
3285 * Cleaned up misc. build warnings.
3286 * Changed artillery damage to be 5 + d6 per gun firing from just d6
3287 per gun firing and updated Damage.t to reflect this change.
3288 * Changed artillery firing ranges to be like ships ranges - divided
3289 by two, and modified them to make more sense.
3290 * Changed artillery units to be "slightly" :) more powerful.
3291 * Changed "cavalry" unit to tech 30 and lowered mil content to 20.
3292 * Changed "artillery" unit to tech 35.
3293 * Changed so that guns are no longer required to build units, and
3294 that guns must be loaded onto artillery units for them to fire.
3295 Client developers note: the show command has not changed yet to
3296 remove the 'guns' column (since guns are no longer required) but
3297 will in a future revision (possibly 4.2.4) so "be prepared" for
3298 "show land build" to change. :)
3299 * Fixed landunitgun to handle all the damage calculations like it should.
3300 * Fixed bug sinking planes when the ship they are on sinks.
3301 * Fixed bug destroying planes when the land unit they are on is destroyed.
3302 * Fixed bug where land units could fire support without enough military.
3303 * Fixed bug in abandoning sectors by marching out a land unit where it
3304 would not let you sometimes (uninitialized variable problem.)
3305 * Fixed gets problem in files.c (James Risner)
3306 * Fixed bug in determinig operations range of a ship.
3307 * Fixed bug in building planes where you could manufacture military.
3308 * Fixed warnings in threading package(s).
3309 * Fixed fire.t to reflect new firing changes.
3310 * Fixed lstat.t to reflect new firing changes.
3311 * Fixed sstat.t to reflect the way things really work.
3312 * Fixed Ship-types.t to reflect the way things really work.
3313 * Fixed the way shutdowns work to hopefully better protect data files.
3314 * Fixed bug in attacking when sector mobility is less than 0 and it would
3315 prompt for attacking with a negative amount of military.
3316 * Fixed typo in fire.t stating wrong parameters for firing from a sector.
3317 * Fixed bug in client when it prompts for country name it was putting
3318 an extraneous end of line on the end that needed to be stripped off.
3319 * Fixed problems running on Linux running on an Alpha machine. Thanks
3320 to Rocky Mountain Internet and Jeremy A. Cunningham for giving us time
3321 on a machine to work out the bugs. (Note that the only build that
3322 works on Linux/Alpha is the linux-pthreads)
3324 Changes to Empire 4.2.2 - Sun Dec 27 12:46:34 PST 1998
3325 * Added some code optimizations into the update code when building paths.
3326 * Added some new cacheing for building paths to help speed up updates.
3327 * Added so that you can use "name" and "password" with the change command
3328 as well as "country" and "representative".
3329 * Added flag to power command so that if you are a deity and enter
3330 a negative number of countries you want to see, you see the power chart
3331 for that many countries without power numbers on the next line. Only
3332 useful for deities that want to see the chart un-broken up by that line.
3333 * Added new functionality to fortify command. You can now use a negative
3334 fortification value to cause the unit to be fortified and leave at
3335 least that much mobility on the unit. I.E. "fort * -67" will fortify
3336 all units and make sure the mobility of each unit doesn't go below
3337 67. If the mobility is already below that level (or equal) the unit
3339 * Added that the realm command prints "Realm #n is x:x,y:y" after
3340 you set a new realm.
3341 * Added TREATIES option and enabled it by default.
3342 * Added "no depth-charging subs" and "no new land units" treaty
3344 * Added Trannie Carter's basic client fix to use fgets instead of gets.
3345 * Changed market and command to only print the lowest priced lot of
3346 each given commodity by default. If you specify "all" it shows
3347 all lots on the market, and if you specify a specific item, it shows
3348 all lots of that item type.
3349 * Changed start command to only write out sector if it changed.
3350 * Changed stop command to only write out sector if it changed.
3351 * Changed how plane names were changed on server startup if the
3352 PLANENAMES option was enabled.
3353 * Changed move command to use standard askyn function for abandoning
3355 * Changed plane overlight sightings to take stealth into account,
3356 and if the planes managed to evade all flak and interceptors, they
3357 are not marked as "spotted" over enemy sectors.
3358 * Changed all units with the supply flag to have their marching speeds
3359 based on efficiency since that is their purpose. What this means is
3360 that supply units and trains are more effective at 100% than at 10%
3361 (just as fighting units are more effective at 100% than at 10%, but
3362 their effectiveness is determined by how well they fight, not how well
3363 they "run away, run away!" :) )
3364 * Changed so that flash toggle is on by default for POGO at setup
3366 * Changed so that when a sector is taken, all land units owned by the
3367 current owner are treated as planes are during takeovers (i.e. there
3368 is a pretty good chance they are blown up, and if not, they change owner
3369 to the attacker and are beat up pretty good.)
3370 * Fixed treaties to work again.
3371 * Fixed bug in taking over land units not using correct pointer (can
3372 cause a crash or data corruption.)
3373 * Fixed collect command to wipe deliver and distribution information
3375 * Fixed potential bug in bmap not working when destination bmap has
3377 * Fixed bug in shark command not getting right nation structure.
3378 * Fixed bug in server where empty commands (for example, all spaces
3379 or tabs) were being reported as bogus commands. They are now just
3381 * Fixed bug in scrap not dropping land units off of scrapped units carrying
3383 * Fixed bug in news where boarding of land units was reported backwards.
3384 * Fixed bug in calculating new people when growing them during an update.
3385 * Fixed missing -ltermcap in HP/UX build.
3386 * Fixed setsector to limit mobility to 127 not 255 (255 was being caught
3387 later and being reset to 0 anyway)
3388 * Fixed Sector-types.t to show a '\e' instead of a '/' for wasteland,
3389 since that is what it really is.
3390 * Fixed retreat.t documentation to reflect the "retreat upon failed
3392 * Fixed bug where satellites were not orbiting the world during the
3394 * Fixed bug in torpedos being too smart. They knew how to jump over
3395 land! :) Now the "line_of_sight" routine is used to determine if a
3396 torpedo has a straight path to the destination. If it doesn't, the
3397 torpedo no longer jumps over land, but instead slams into it. This was
3398 an interesting bug because you could torp ships on the other side of
3399 a very skinny island as long as they were in range, even if there was
3400 no sea route possible.
3401 * Fixed bug when pinbombing and you run out of an object to pinbomb (land
3402 units for example) but you still have to pick something to bomb. For
3403 ships it worked ok (just aborted that it couldn't find any more ships)
3404 and this was fixed for land units and planes.
3405 * Fixed server crashing bug when flying a plane and not carrying
3407 * Fixed bug in move losing commodities when it runs out of room in the
3408 destination sector. Goods are now attempted to be returned to the
3409 start sector, and apporpriate steps taken if the start sector is no
3411 * Fixed march to prompt you before you abandon a sector you own by
3412 marching out the last land unit.
3413 * Fixed check functions to only check the relevant portions of the structure
3414 and not the timestamp info that doesn't affect how the object functions.
3415 * Fixed bug in spy command that always told you if a spy unit was in a
3417 * Fixed bug in displaying of land unit missions not showing correct land
3419 * Fixed bug in wire command where new announcements that you read at
3420 the last second don't get wiped out properly.
3421 * Fixed bug where announcement file could be corrupted by very long lines.
3422 * Fixed bug where bmap was not set when player was told what kind of
3423 sector they were attacking (this was an old abusable bug that was
3424 removed long ago to fix the abuse, and it's been fixed in a non-abusable
3426 * Fixed bug where change command would warn you about monetary and
3427 BTU costs, but not prompt you to break out if you didn't want to really
3428 change your country name.
3429 * Fixed bug in sub-launched nukes that are intercepted being reported in
3430 the news incorrectly.
3431 * Fixed bug in load where you could abandon a sector and not know it by
3432 loading your last civilians or military onto a ship.
3433 * Fixed potential memory leak in autonav code.
3434 * Fixed potential bug where you could possibly determine if a sector is
3435 owned or not using one way plane missions.
3436 * Fixed Damage.t info page to properly show damages for planes and
3438 * Fixed deliver.t to include syntax for command.
3439 * Fixed country.t to include syntax for command.
3440 * Fixed bug where ships on orders were not adding radar information to
3441 the bmap during an update.
3442 * Fixed bug where ships on sail were not adding radar information to
3443 the bmap during an update.
3444 * Fixed bestownedpath code to use the bmap properly. Note this is a very
3445 important bug fix. When navigating a ship, players are no longer given
3446 free information that they would not normally know. For example, if you
3447 try sailing your ship off into uncharted areas of your bmap, the bestpath
3448 code will only use as much information as you have on-hand (i.e. your
3449 bmap) to plan out your path for you. If you have no information on an
3450 area, it just keeps forging on, until bumping into something. Of course,
3451 after the initial exploration through an area, the bmap will be set and
3452 used for all future sailings through that area. Harbors and bridges
3453 are still checked for construction worthiness if you know where they
3454 are (i.e. they are on your bmap.) (Overall, what happened before
3455 was that the bestpath code would route your ship around islands that
3456 you didn't even know were there, and you could use various commands
3457 to see how that ship was going to sail during the update and thus you
3458 gained information that you wouldn't normally know.)
3459 * Merged bestpath and bestownedpath and wrote new wrappers, "BestShipPath"
3460 and "BestAirPath" to use it properly. It is also good to note that
3461 bestownedpath is used to determine paths for ships and for planes,
3462 and that best_path (which uses the A* algorithm) is used for all land
3463 based paths, and that the two are never interchanged.
3464 * Removed "jet recon" plane (it slipped in during the PLANENAMES conversion,
3465 and RECON was never used before.)
3466 * Removed extraneous "resnoise" and "resbenefit" functions and combined
3467 the two for setresource and setsector commands.
3469 Changes to Empire 4.2.1 - Tue Nov 3 12:56:20 PST 1998
3470 * Fixed problem with global/plane.c not defining last structure element
3471 properly, and thus causing crashes when accessing certain plane
3472 routines. This happened during the move to make the PLANENAMES option
3473 run-time configurable.
3475 Changes to Empire 4.2.0 - Thu Oct 29 06:27:15 PST 1998
3476 * Bumped rev to 4.2.0 since this is a major release (the server is now
3477 run-time configurable for just about everything and is released under
3479 * Put in official licensing information.
3480 * Re-arranged and commented the econfig (Empire Configuration) file. The
3481 auto-generated "data/econfig" file is now pumped out chock full of
3482 comments (which may or may not be useful.) Since the server is
3483 pretty much fully run-time configurable (MAXNOC is not, but it gets
3484 a default of 99 anyway) deities will probably be spending more time
3486 * Added server support for building under NT, including mods from
3487 Doug Hay and Steve McClure to get the server building and running
3488 under NT. (This was built using MSVC++ 5.0 on NT 4.0 and command
3490 * Added Doug Hay's ntthread.c implementation for NT threading.
3491 * Added max pop column to "show sector stats" output.
3492 * Added lboard command for boarding land units from sectors. Only raw
3493 mil can board land units, and only mil and land units aboard the unit
3494 being boarded fight back.
3495 * Added GODNEWS option. When enabled, the deity giving people stuff
3496 is shown in the news.
3497 * Added bridge tower sector ('@')
3498 * Added BRIDGETOWERS option. When enabled you can build bridge towers
3499 from a bridge span. You can then build bridge spans from the tower.
3500 If the tower is destroyed ( <20% eff) bridges connected fall unless
3501 supported on the other side. You can only build bridge towers in open
3502 water not adjacent to land and other towers. Expensive.
3503 * Added plains sector ('~') - Max pop is 1/40th regular sectors, and
3504 it is deity creatable only (can't redesignate unless you wasteland it
3506 * Changed "info all" to no longer use printdir, instead it just uses the "all"
3507 info page which contains this information.
3508 * Changed so you can now load up to 2 spy units onto non-land unit carrying
3509 submarines if the LANDSPIES option is enabled. Useful for sneaking up
3510 to shore and spying on your neighbors.
3511 * Changed so spies unloaded from ships are not given as gifts, they are just
3513 * Changed build command to handle building towers ("build t")
3514 * Changed show command to show tower stats ("show t b")
3515 * Changed reject so you can now reject things from any country except
3516 deity countries (this now includes sanctuary countries and visitor
3517 countries you don't want to deal with)
3518 * Changed ndump to dump nuclear stockpile ID as well.
3519 * Changed flash so that if someone allied to you is either not logged on or
3520 not accepting flashes, you are notified. This is info you could gain
3521 otherwise since you can see other countries that are allied to you via
3523 * Fixed bug in news command when HIDDEN mods are enabled.
3524 * Fixed distribute command to only write out to the database if we
3525 actually changed the sector (i.e. if we really moved the dist
3526 center, we write. Otherwise, it makes no point.)
3527 * Fixed threshold command to only write out to the database if
3528 we actually changed the sector (i.e. if we really changed the
3529 threshold, we write. Otherwise, it makes no point.)
3530 * Fixed - population growth and truncation in "Update-sequence.t" info
3532 * Fixed the way fortify takes mobility away from a land unit if
3533 engineers are present.
3534 * Fixed bug in buying commodities at the last minute not resetting the
3535 time correctly in all situations.
3536 * Fixed bug in building nukes where it would always ask if you tried
3537 building more than one at a time.
3538 * Fixed bug where if you put (either by building or by transporting)
3539 more than 127 of one type of nuke in a sector, they all got lost. A
3540 negative wrapover sort of thing.
3541 * Fixed ndump to print # of stockpiles dumped.
3542 * Fixed ndump.t to reflect changes
3543 * Fixed bug in build command that didn't account for EOL characters.
3544 * Fixed bug where you could use planes to drop conquered populace
3545 * Fixed bug in distribute command in how it checked for current distribution
3547 * Fixed pr_flash and pr_inform to no longer send messages if the player
3548 is still in the process of logging in (i.e. not in the PLAYING state)
3549 * Fixed report command output for deities.
3550 * Fixed bug in nuclear damage either taking out submarines when it
3551 shouldn't, or not taking them out when it should.
3552 * Fixed bug in loading units that are carrying units onto other units
3553 (note that it doesn't happen since only HEAVY units can carry other
3554 units and that check works, but that might change some day, and we
3555 don't want units carrying units to be carried by other units, etc. :) )
3556 * Fixed info pages to reflect new sector types.
3557 * Fixed info pages to reflect new spy unit capabilities.
3558 * Fixed show commands to only show trade ships if the TRADESHIPS option
3560 * Fixed build command to only allow building of trade ships if the
3561 TRADESHIPS options is enabled.
3562 * Fixed up some definitions located in many places used for checking
3563 sectors for navigation rights.
3564 * Fixed power.t to correctly describe NEW_POWER formula.
3565 * Made HIDDEN option run time configurable.
3566 * Made LOSE_CONTACT option run time configurable.
3567 * Made ORBIT option run time configurable.
3568 * Made SAIL option run time configurable.
3569 * Made MOB_ACCESS option run time configurable.
3570 * Made FALLOUT option run time configurable.
3571 * Made SLOW_WAR option run time configurable.
3572 * Made SNEAK_ATTACK option run time configurable.
3573 * Made WORLD_X and WORLD_Y run time configurable.
3574 * Made MARKET option run time configurable.
3575 * Made LOANS option run time configurable.
3576 * Made BIG_CITY option run time configurable.
3577 * Made TRADESHIPS option run time configurable.
3578 * Made SHIPNAMES option run time configurable.
3579 * Made DEMANDUPDATE option run time configurable.
3580 * Made UPDATESCHED option run time configurable.
3581 * Made LANDSPIES option run time configurable.
3582 * Made NONUKES option run time configurable.
3583 * Made PLANENAMES option run time configurable.
3584 * Removed SMALL_SERVER stuff (unused baggage)
3585 * Removed trading post sector ('v')
3587 Changes to Empire 4.0.18 - Thu Sep 24 06:54:27 PDT 1998
3588 * Fixed bug in aircombat where planes in flight could intercept air
3589 defense planes and take no damage (i.e. they got to fight twice,
3591 * Fixed bug in freeing memory after performing missions that could crash
3592 the server (it mainly happened after an interdiction mission using
3593 planes and escorts, where some escorts came from airports that didn't have
3594 bombers going up. Freeing the leftover escorts was crashing the server.)
3595 * Fixed bug where you could load non-existant units if you were allied
3597 * Fixed bug where you could pin-bomb a plane with itself.
3598 * Fixed bug where satellites over a bridge may get killed if the bridge
3600 * Fixed bug where land units on a ship in the same sector as a bridge
3601 that is splashed may get sunk.
3602 * Fixed bug where planes on a ship in the same sector as a bridge
3603 that is splashed may get sunk.
3604 * Fixed doconfig with correct empire site text.
3605 * Fixed major problem with abms not firing, and sometimes crashing
3607 * Fixed bug in land units counting up loaded units wrong.
3608 * Fixed doconfig makefile to have doconfig.c as a dependency.
3609 * Fixed bug in resetting commodities (the comm_uid was not being
3611 * Fixed bug in repaying loans not working correctly (the l_uid was not
3612 being properly set.)
3613 * Fixed bug in buying items from the trading block not allowing you
3614 to due to a perceived change in item status.
3615 * Fixed bug in mfir.c where a bogus input to a target could crash
3617 * Fixed bug that after you read telegrams new telegrams may not send
3618 an inform message (the old telegram flags were not cleared.)
3619 * Fixed bug where fort support distance calculations are calculated
3620 twice instead of just once. This bug caused a lower percentage
3621 of support fire than designed.
3622 * Fixed bomb.t to reflect land unit changes.
3623 * Put in some integrity checking for planes returing from bombing runs.
3624 * Added ability to edit land unit that a land unit is loaded on in
3626 * Consolidated bridgefall code into "knockdown" function (this code
3627 existed in at least 3 places, and was different in all of them.)
3628 * Subs returning fire are no longer reported in the news.
3629 * Visitor countries can now use the 'motd' command.
3630 * When trying to use a visitor country, if it is in use, you are not told
3631 by whom, just that it is in use.
3632 * Optimized (slightly) support fire from forts not getting supply and
3633 shells if not needed (out of range)
3634 * Updated Education.t
3635 * Modified (increased) chances of hitting mines slightly.
3636 * Removed unused variables from shp_check_mines.
3638 Changes to Empire 4.0.17 - Fri Jul 31 06:12:21 PDT 1998
3639 * Added ability in edit to change coastal flag for sectors.
3640 * Added ability in edit to edit plague values for ships.
3641 * Added ability for "spy" to report all units/planes not owned by you
3642 that exist in the sector you are spying from.
3643 * Modified naval planes and anti-sub planes.
3644 * Changed so that missiles and bombs that miss their targets cause
3645 collateral damage in the target sector (they have to land somewhere!)
3646 * Changed llook so that non-spy units are required to have at least 1
3647 military personnel on board to see anything.
3648 * Fixed "llookout.t" to reflect change for military requirement.
3651 * Added "lmine" flag for deities to see what sectors have mines in them
3652 (works for sea and land mines, used "lmine" to distinguish it from "min"
3653 which determines mineral (iron) content of a sector.)
3654 * No longer able to pin bomb land units on a ship.
3655 * Land units are required to have at least one military loaded to perform
3657 * Firing land units are required to have at least on military loaded to
3658 be able to fire (or return fire.)
3659 * Spies are not always seen when being pinbombed. You have to look very
3660 carefully for them (as you usually would.)
3661 * Fixed typo in "Spies.t"
3662 * Added new info about spy ability to spy.t.
3663 * Updated tax information in Innards.t and Update-sequence.t
3664 * Fixed typo in fire.t information about units firing on ships.
3665 * Loading military onto land units now resets fortification. (You gotta
3666 re-fortify the new guys.)
3667 * Fixed bug where planes that were mine capable could not drop mines if
3668 they were not cargo capable.
3669 * Fixed bug in potentially crashing in update code for nations tech/research.
3670 * Fixed bug in execute putting you into execute mode incorrectly.
3671 * Fixed bug in board not allowing land units to board from 0 mobility
3673 * Fixed bug where interdicted land units that were missed displayed
3674 a "SPLASH! Bombs miss your ships" message.
3675 * Fixed bug in minesweeping sectors where, even with mobility or
3676 having the sweep ability, ships would get hit by mines for doing
3678 * Fixed bug in count_land_planes always writing out land units unnecessarily.
3679 * Fixed bug in count_planes always writing out ships unnecessarily.
3680 * Fixed bug in lnd_count_units always writing out land units unnecessarily.
3681 * Fixed bug in count_units always writing out ships unnecessarily.
3682 * Fixed bug in llook that reported units on ships.
3683 * Fixed bug in llook that reported satellites launched over the unit.
3684 * Fixed bug in llook that always reported spies (it should be a 10-100%
3686 * Fixed bug in anti possibly not saving lost items correctly.
3687 * Fixed bug in planes getting extended range when on missions and the
3688 op center is not where the plane is located.
3689 * Fixed bug in land unit defensive strength not being based on the eff of
3690 the unit when calculating odds of a battle.
3691 * Fixed bug in board not reporting consistant information.
3692 * Fixed bug in the way land unit casualties were being taken.
3693 * Fixed bug where land units on ships could return fire.
3694 * Fixed bug where land units on other land units could return fire.
3695 * Fixed bug where land units on other land units could fire.
3696 * Fixed bug in attacks/assaults/boardings spreading plague incorrectly.
3697 * Fixed bug in updating plague for ships.
3698 * Fixed bug in updating plague for land units.
3699 * Fixed bug in updating plague for attacking/defending land units.
3700 * Fixed bug where you couldn't pin-bomb land units that were < 20% eff.
3701 * Fixed bug which revealed the owner of torping subs when on a mission.
3703 Changes to Empire 4.0.16 - Fri Jun 12 08:52:06 EDT 1998
3704 * Added patches sent in by Steve McClure, Sverker Wiberg and Curtis
3705 Larsen. They are described with other changes below.
3706 * Fixed bugs in the following commands that allowed two cooperating
3707 countries to create infinite numbers of any commodity and/or cash
3708 at any time (race conditions in the server): build, board, deliver,
3709 designate, distribute, explore, fuel, improve, load, ltend, mobquota,
3710 move, name, order, reset, sail, sell, set, tend, territory, test,
3711 threshold, torpedo, transport, unload
3712 * Fixed bug in board command giving out too much information about a
3713 non-owned sector when it shouldn't be.
3714 * Fixed bug in board command when firing on a sector in defense before
3716 * Fixed bug in rangeedit allowing plane(s) to possibly be stored wrong.
3717 * Fixed bug in launch allowing plane to possibly be stored wrong after
3719 * Fixed bug in lrangeedit allowing land unit(s) to possibly be stored wrong.
3720 * Fixed bug in morale allowing land unit(s) to possibly be stored wrong.
3721 * Fixed bug in arm/disarm allowing a plane to possibly be stored wrong.
3722 * Fixed bug in loan sometimes not writing database correctly.
3723 * Fixed bug in collect.
3724 * Fixed bug in dropping mines from land units.
3725 * Fixed crashing bug in sector_strength routine when oceans take
3727 * Fixed bug in transport possibly decrementing too much mobility when
3729 * Fixed some little warning type messages building with gcc -Wall.
3730 * Fixed problem compiling lwp threads with glibc6 under Linux.
3731 * Changed flash so that players can always flash deities.
3732 * Changed players command to always show deities and visitor countries
3733 that are logged on, and only show allied countries for normal player
3735 * Fixed bug in anti command not stopping sectors when they revolt.
3736 * Fixed bug in set_coastal function not counting bridge spans as
3737 water based sectors (after all, the land is still a coastal sector,
3738 even if next to a bridge span.)
3739 * "flash" and "players" is re-enabled for visitor accounts.
3740 * Fixed bug in bleeding of technology and research to other players.
3741 * Fixed bug in explore not spreading plague correctly.
3742 * Fixed bug in move not spreading plague correctly.
3743 * Fixed bug in deliver not spreading plague correctly.
3744 * Fixed bug in distribute not spreading plague.
3745 * Included "postresults" script in the scripts directory which can be
3746 used to auto-post daily power chart/announcements to rec.games.empire.
3749 * Removed OVCONFIG from build.conf, and patched doconfig to match.
3750 * doconfig is only run if needed
3751 * emp_client and emp_server are only linked if needed
3752 * Added list of disabled options to the version command.
3753 * Fixed bug in survey allowing you to see hidden variables.
3754 * Re-enabled escort missions due to above bug fix most likely the problem.
3755 * Changed one instance of "restrict" to "restricted" in bestpath.c. For
3756 some reason, this was causing a problem on one of the Linux builds (??).
3757 * Added "show sector capabilities" functionality (this didn't exist
3759 * Fixed bug in neweff not reporting stopped sectors. It now (correctly)
3760 reports them as not changing eff.
3762 Changes to Empire 4.0.15 - Wed May 20 12:35:53 EDT 1998
3763 * Fixed the spelling of Markus' name in CHANGES4.0 files.
3764 * Added Markus' patches/fixes. Some are detailed below.
3765 * Added 'mipsultrix.gxx' build target.
3766 * Fixed doconfig to write ipglob.c in the correct target area.
3767 * Fixed a bunch of type casting that needed to be done correctly.
3768 * Only print out last connect by for non-visitor accounts.
3769 * 'players' command is only useable by non-visitor accounts.
3770 * Fixed ask_off in attsub.c to not print out allied sector mil counts
3771 when attacking from neighboring sectors.
3772 * Fixed targetting of che when taking over sectors.
3773 * 'anti' command only fights che that are targetted at you.
3774 * Fixed update not updating timestamps of objects (ships, planes, land
3776 * Fixed bug delivering conquered populace.
3777 * Fixed potential bug scuttling ship with land units on it.
3778 * Moved heavy bombers to tech 90.
3779 * Fixed bug in setsector telling the deity coordinates of sectors being
3781 * Fixed bug in setting budget of enlistment sectors to 0.
3783 Changes to Empire 4.0.14 - Wed Apr 8 08:47:54 EDT 1998
3784 * Fixed time_t problem in common/log.c
3785 * Fixed bug in headlines
3786 * Replaced vaxultrix build flags with proper vanilla ones.
3787 * Fixed bug in update/prepare.c (sometimes not getting charged for
3788 mil on units and ships)
3789 * Fixed bug in printing of "No ship(s)" twice in cargo command when no
3790 ships were selected.
3791 * Temporarily disabled escort missions until a fix is found. They are
3792 randomly crashing the server.
3793 * Fixed morale.t to reflect that retreat percentage is based off of
3794 morale_base and not 75.
3795 * Fixed bug in bridgefall where planes and units on ship in a sector
3796 that has a bridge collapse are being sunk.
3797 * Fixed bug in update/produce.c when a sector overflows it's capacity
3799 * Fixed bug in produce command reporting incorrect costs (sometimes).
3800 * Land units on ships will now try to draw supply from the ship they
3803 Changes to Empire 4.0.13 - Mon Mar 2 11:04:28 EST 1998
3804 * Fixed bug in distribute when world sizes are other than 64x32
3805 * Fixed bug in getcommand (not really a bug, just made it work like
3806 it used to so that the players command is useful for deities
3808 * Fixed building of POSIX threads on Alpha running Digital Unix.
3809 * Fixed line_of_sight prototype in sona.c
3810 * Fixed fairland not to conuse stupid C++ compilers.
3812 Changes to Empire 4.0.12 - Tue Feb 24 11:27:31 EST 1998
3813 * Fixed client build on linux (whoops)
3815 Changes to Empire 4.0.11 - Tue Feb 10 10:53:10 EST 1998
3816 * AIX build seems to only work with gcc right now (but at least that works)
3817 * Vax Ultrix (vaxultrix) build should work now (hopefully) out of the box.
3818 * Took out autosupply of airports when bombing or dropping shells.
3819 (This was the only commodity this was done for, and it was creating
3820 problems since supply is still somewhat broken somewhere)
3821 * Included Curtis Larsen's, Markus Armbruster's and Sverker Wiberg's
3822 submitted patches, which collectively included cleaning up most
3823 of the server prototypes and bogus declarations. Many thanks.
3824 * Increased incoming command buffer to 1024 from 512 bytes
3825 * Increased the # of parsed arguments from 64 to 100
3826 * Fixed bug where spies were not dying when damaged.
3827 * Fixed bug in HIDDEN mods in declare command not printing country # of
3828 uncontacted country correctly (or at all as a matter of fact)
3830 Changes to Empire 4.0.10 - Mon Aug 18 12:34:58 EDT 1997
3831 * Fixed bug where fleets were being interdicted but the damage was being
3832 spread to ships not in the same sectors.
3833 * Fixed but in market when buying goods without enough cash.
3834 * Planes in orbit over airports are no longer fixed up during updates.
3835 * Planes in orbit are no longer damaged when the sectors they are over
3837 * Planes on ships are no longer damaged when the sectors they are in are
3838 damaged, unless the ship is damaged.
3839 * Fixed problem with no newline after partisan activity telegram in
3841 * Fixed problem in chan.c printing out change costs incorrectly.
3842 * Fixed problem in dispatch.c screwing things up on redirection.
3843 * financial should now handle 6 and 7 digit loans.
3844 * Planes on ships that are in sectors that revolt are no longer taken
3846 * Fixed bug in powe.c where the power report was mis-calculating the
3847 efficiency of planes.
3848 * Fixed doconfig.c to use STDC instead of multi-level #ifdefs.
3849 * Fixed bug in parse.c that was screwing up double quotes in conditional
3851 * Military in a sector now only produce up to maxpop, just like civvies
3852 and uw's. No more stuffing 6K mil into a mountain to max it out. You
3853 can still hold more mil there over the updates, but the extras just
3854 won't produce anymore.
3855 * Fixed bug in shark that allowed you to shark up loans even if you couldn't
3857 * Fixed bug in day of week calculation for server up time in common/keyword.c
3858 that is used for gamedays.
3859 * Documented what happens to standing military in collect.t when you collect
3861 * Documented mountains only holding and using 1/10th of the normal sector
3862 population in Sector-types.t.
3863 * Fixed documentation on ship's firing ranges in fire.t to be less
3865 * Updated nukes in nuke.t
3866 * Added apropos command (thanks to Mike Wise)
3867 * Added case-insensitivity to the info command (thanks to Mike Wise). If
3868 there are two files of the same name, and you don't get a complete match,
3869 then whichever file is found first in the directory is used.
3870 * Changed documentation in wantupd.h
3872 Changes to Empire 4.0.9 - Sat Apr 19 23:01:51 EDT 1997
3873 * Fixed dump info pages that were getting formatted funny.
3874 * Fixed improve info page.
3875 * Fixed bug in allied planes/units not moving when the carriers move.
3876 * Fixed bug in satellite output for <100% satellites.
3877 * Fixed bug in load/unload not putting a newline after some unloadings
3879 * Fixed bug in harden not printing correct values.
3880 * Fixed bug in creating/moving/etc. nuclear stockpiles.
3881 * Fixed bug where subs were trying to torp commodities moving on land when
3882 on interdiction. (This was funny ;-) )
3883 * Fixed bug in "move" where you could keep a sector even after someone else
3885 * Budget now correctly reports the # of units being built.
3886 * Mil on units & ships are now reported as normal military costs, not
3887 ship or unit maintainence costs in budget.
3888 * Fixed bug in update code where taxes could potentially be initialized
3889 incorrectly (affected budgets too.)
3890 * Fixed bug in nat.h header so that it uses SCT_MAXDEF instead of a fixed
3891 number (that was incorrect.)
3892 * Fixed bug with trains - they needed the xlight flag to carry planes.
3893 * Revamped and improved flak.
3894 * Added "Flak" info page.
3895 * Added "Fallout" info page.
3896 * Fixed repay/offer/consider to all need a capital to be used.
3897 * Fixed bug with air defense missions not running when not AT WAR. They now
3899 * plane/ship/unit short names are all now 4 characters, padded if needed.
3900 * pdump/sdump/ldump/ndump now just print the short name for the type.
3901 * sdump now has ship name at very end in quotes.
3902 These were done at the request of some client developers for ease of use.
3903 * Fixed extra space in the dump output.
3904 * Fixed fallout - not quite so nasty anymore.
3905 * Fixed fallout - things on ships/units are damaged now.
3906 * Fixed and balanced planes/ships/units/nukes in conjunction with each other.
3907 * Fixed bug in doconfig.c calculating wrong s_p_etu sometimes.
3908 * Fixed bug where harbors weren't being used to resupply.
3909 * Fixed bug where selling units loaded with planes and units wouldn't take
3910 the loaded planes or units - they are now dropped.
3911 * Fixed bug in arm/disarm where you could arm/disarm planes on the trading
3913 * Deities can now remove things from the trading block/market.
3914 * Fixed bug in "work" not charging engineers enough mob.
3915 * Fixed bug in "work" not adding teardown and buildup avail costs together.
3916 * Subs no longer need mobility to return fire when fired upon.
3918 * Fixed bug in "trade" allowing 2 players to pay for the same item, but only
3919 the last player gets it.
3920 * Fixed bug where you couldn't launch missiles from allied ships or sectors.
3921 * Fixed bombing so that pin-bombing can cause collateral damage too.
3922 * Fixed sector damage to damage planes there too.
3923 * Fixed flag in lload so that it doesn't always print if not needed.
3924 * Fixed "sell.t" info page.
3925 * Fixed bug in "buy" where not entering the price correctly could cause
3927 * Fixed "sell" so that at least 1 mobility is required to sell goods. Keeps
3928 the midnight "raid and sell" abuse down. :)
3929 * Fixed "show plane cap" to move the last column over 1 more where it should
3931 * Fixed timestamps to be updated for units/planes on ships/units that move,
3932 since those units/planes move too.
3934 Changes to Empire 4.0.8 - Wed Feb 26 23:00:51 EST 1997
3935 * Fixed bug in nstr_exec that was wiping out the previous conditional.
3936 This was major because it affected timestamp values which are more
3938 * Fixed bug in sdump.c for typo in reporting the trade ships origin.
3940 Changes to Empire 4.0.7 - Mon Feb 24 22:48:54 EST 1997
3941 * Fixed bug in aircombat.c when calculating the air combat odds. Negative
3942 numbers were screwing things up good...
3943 * Fort sector's coordinates are no longer printed when auto-firing at
3945 * Subs can now surface and fire deck guns (again) They can also be
3946 hit by return fire when doing so.
3947 * Fixed bug in setting of plane attack and defensive values so that
3948 negative numbers don't keep going further negative.
3949 * Fixed incorrect military control calculation in the sell command.
3950 * Trading posts are no longer required to sell goods from. You can sell
3951 from harbors and warehouses now too.
3952 * Spy now prints out the owner of land units you see when spying. Before
3953 this was assumed to be sector owner, which is no longer true.
3954 * Loading land units now prints out what was loaded onto each unit,
3955 just as loading ships do.
3956 * Added fallout, coast, c_del, m_del, c_cut and m_cut to dump output.
3957 * Added "GO_RENEW" option. This option means that gold and oil resources
3959 * Added "lost_items_timeout" config variable, and set the default to
3960 48 hours. This determines how long lost items stay in the lost items
3962 * Fixed land unit names to be more consistent.
3963 * Fixed mission.t info page.
3964 * Fixed bug in that if mission_mob_cost was set to 0, even negative
3965 mob units should be able to be put on missions.
3966 * Removed restriction on things needing to be at least 60% to be put
3967 on a mission. Note that while you can put them on missions at < 60%
3968 now, when trying to do the mission, it still checks the eff. This
3969 is to help in automatic setup (build, put on mission, forget) instead
3970 of having to come back repeatedly.
3971 * Spies caught in Neutral or Friendly countries cause the Neutral or
3972 Friendly country to go Hostile towards the owner of the spy.
3973 * Tweaked ammunition numbers for artillery units.
3974 * No more automatic declarations of War should be made. You will go
3975 hostile, but since going to war doesn't increase your countries
3976 defenses, and is purely political, it is left to the player to go
3978 * Fixed bug in trade that wasn't incrementing the time if last second bidding.
3979 * Fixed bug in "lmine" that was crashing the server if the land unit was
3981 * Fixed buy so that if you specify a product, you can only bid on that
3983 * Added "lost.t" info page.
3984 * Added "lost items" database (EF_LOST)
3985 * Fixed bug where you could move in allied forces after an attack if they
3986 bordered the victim area.
3987 * Fixed nstr_comp to deal with values > 16 bits coming in from
3988 client for comparisons.
3989 * Changed last minute market/trade timers to increment 5 minutes. 2 minutes
3991 * Fixed decode in lib/common/nstr_subs.c to deal with NSC_TIME better.
3992 * Commented out the logging of the market checking in server/marketup.c,
3993 lib/commands/buy.c and lib/commands/trad.c It was generating lots of
3994 pretty much useless data that made parsing the server.log file more
3995 more difficult than it needed to be.
3996 * Fixed crashing bug in ldump.
3997 * sdump, ldump, ndump, pdump and dump now print out the current
3998 timestamp on the "DUMP XXX" line.
3999 * Fixed denial of service bug in lib/player/accept.c in
4000 player_find_other function.
4001 * Fixed bug in shark reporting incorrect buyer of the loan.
4002 * Fixed bug in sdump.c (case 0 should have been case 10)
4003 * ldump and sdump now always print the fuel column if asked for,
4004 even if opt_FUEL is turned off. In the case that it is turned
4005 off, the fuel is listed as 0.
4006 * Added "timestamp" field, which is updated every time an item is
4008 * Fixed up the Clients.t info page.
4009 * sdump now prints trade ship building origin.
4010 * sdump now always prints name even if SHIPNAMES isn't defined. If
4011 it is not defined, then the name is empty.
4012 * Added "timestamp" to info/Concepts/Selector.t
4013 * Added some more relevant info to info/Server/Empire4.t
4014 * Fixed Infrastructure.t info page to reflect the fact that infrastructure
4015 is no longer torn down when a sector is re-designated.
4016 * Fixed sell.t to more accurately reflect the time-delay market.
4017 * Fixed read.t and wire.t to reference accept and reject.
4018 * Fixed reject.t not referencing accept command.
4019 * Fixed collect.t to more accurately reflect what goes on when collecting
4021 * Fixed financial.t to reflect defaulted loans.
4022 * Fixed dump.t, sdump.t, ldump.t, ndump.t, pdump.t to reflect new
4024 * Fixed "census.t" (had incorrect reference to "info syntax" instead
4027 Changes to Empire 4.0.6 - Thu Jan 16 11:33 EST 1997
4028 * Increased damage from depthcharges because on increased damage from
4029 torpedos. Sub frange decreased to be more balanced with destroyer frange.
4030 * Intelligence reports (spy) on units will now report the estimated number
4032 * Fixed equation for ship visibility so it will drop as tech increases.
4033 * Added new commands sdump, ldump, pdump, and ndump to dump data on ships,
4034 land units, planes, and nukes.
4035 * If fields are provided, dump will only supply those fields requested.
4036 * Decreased speed of subs.
4037 * When options NO_LCMS or NO_HCMS are set, those commodities are no longer
4038 required for infrastructure improvements.
4039 * Units that lose an assault or a boarding attempt from a ship will no
4040 longer swim back to the ship they came from.
4041 * Units that take extra casualties will no longer lose all their mil at
4043 * Infrastucture is retained when redesignating a sector.
4044 * Dieing spies will no longer crash the server.
4045 * Units, planes, and ships must have mobility to perform missions.
4046 * Units on ship being scrapped are transferred to harbor.
4047 * Food is no longer autoloaded onto units when they are built.
4048 * Fixed show plane stat to show correct range.
4049 * Infantries now take damage at same rate as casualties.
4050 * Fixed bug with hap_fact. Having more happiness now helps with fighting
4052 * Fixed anti to write back target country so che will continue to fight
4054 * Fixed llookout to show correct estimate on number of mil on unit.
4055 * Added buildable architecture "hp". This type will build the server on
4056 a HP/UX machine using the standard compiler instead of gcc.
4058 Changes to Empire 4.0.5 - Thu Dec 12 10:28:48 EST 1996
4059 * Fixed bug in update/distribute.c where pathcost was not being called with
4060 the MOB_ROAD argument (and thus distribution costs could be GREATLY
4061 affected.) - Thanks Ice!
4063 Changes to Empire 4.0.4 - Mon Dec 9 11:00:00 EST 1996
4064 * Fixed Solaris port using gcc.
4065 * Fixed doconfig.c to create directories with right modes.
4066 * Fixed install macros in makefiles to move binaries to the right
4069 Changes to Empire 4.0.3 - Wed Dec 4 22:46:53 EST 1996
4071 * Fixed doconfig.c (put exit(0) at the end of main.)
4072 * Fixed improve.c (moved the prompt[] string outside the fcn.)
4074 Changes to Empire 4.0.2 - Mon Oct 14 12:26:40 EDT 1996
4075 * Put in LND_MINMOBCOST in land.h
4076 * Put in change in lnd_mobcost in lndsub.c
4077 * Put in new nuke costs in nuke.c
4078 * Put in fix so that total work can only be done by the max pop. No more extra
4079 civvies tossed in will do it anymore in human.c.
4080 * Put in fix for src/util/Makefile - beefed it up.
4081 * Put in fix to show where your ship is when it gets shelled in mfir.c.
4082 * Changed infrastructure of roads from .040 to .020 (122 instead of 150 in
4084 * Fixed Update-sequence.t.
4085 * Put in fix for mobcost bonus for 0% highways.
4088 * Spruced up torpedo damage somewhat. :) :)
4089 * Fixed "assault bmap bug" in attsub.c
4090 * Fixed Produce.t (bars cost)
4091 * Changed mountains to get an automatic "2" for defensive bonus in attsub.c
4095 * Fixed "offer" and "consider" not being legal commands in player/empmod.c
4098 * Fixed lstat.c, pstat.c and sstat.c
4099 * Fixed cutoff command in cuto.c
4100 * Fixed attack value in attack_val in lndsub.c
4101 * Fixed lload in commands/load.c
4102 * Fixed defense_val in lndsub.c - Made it a minimum of 1, so that units will
4103 always fight until dead or retreating. 0 makes them get stuck.
4104 * Fixed update/deliver.c - no delivery of non-oldowned civvies (or anything
4105 else for that matter.)
4106 * Fixed llook in commands/look.c
4107 * Fixed che bug in subs/nstr.c
4108 * Fixed bug in strv.c by overcompensating by 1 food per sector (minute amounts
4109 of people would starve.)
4110 * Fixed update/human.c - feed_people rounding problems (I hope.)
4111 * Fixed morale problem in update/land.c
4112 * Fixed count_bodies in attsub.c
4113 * Fixed lnd_mobcost.
4114 * Fixed subs/land,plane,ship.c to handle sunken units and planes correctly.
4115 * Fixed interest rate in commands/offe.c
4116 * Fixed bug in buy.c.
4117 * Put in DEFENSE_INFRA soption o you can turn on/off the use of the defensive
4118 infrastructure. When off, the defensive infrastructure is the same
4119 as the sector efficiency, and you can't improve it. This is OFF by
4123 * Land units are now built with a default reaction radius of 0.
4124 * Changed name of lt artilleries to "lat" from "lart" so you can now build
4126 * Lowered the speed and firing range of pt boats.
4127 * Lowered the initial att strength of cavs from 1.5 to 1.3 (they were TOO
4129 * Changed the max mob gain defaults of units/planes to 1.0 and ships to 1.5
4130 (This is * ETU_RATE, so it is equal to ETU_RATE for units/planes and
4131 1.5 * ETU_RATE for ships.)
4132 * Conquered civvies only pay 1/4 taxes.
4133 * Railways don't get torn down when you rebuild sectors anymore (but roads
4134 and defenses do (if enabled.)
4136 Changes to Empire 4.0.1 - Wed Aug 28 11:35:40 EDT 1996
4137 * Added "extern double tradetax" to check_trade in trad.c
4138 * Improved description of data directory in build.conf
4139 * Fixed bug in attacking land units that retreat so they now get
4140 charged mobility for attacking.
4141 * Fixed dump to report road, rail and defense of a sector at the end.
4142 * Fixed doconfig bug in not checking the right directory to see if the
4143 "data" directory existed or not before trying to create it.
4144 * "change" now works for sanctuary countries.
4145 * Fixed the description of "sinfrastructure".
4146 * Added more info to "Infrastructure".
4147 * Units/planes are no longer reduced to 75% when bought from the trading
4149 * Supply units were slowed down to the speed of infantry units.
4150 * Trade-ship payoffs have been lowered to 2.5, 3.5 and 5.0
4151 * Bars interest is up to $250 per 1K again.
4152 * Civ taxes were raised back up to a 10:1 mil/civ tax ratio (was 20:1)
4153 * Fixed various info pages.
4154 * Fixed bug in people not getting truncated when broke (this was thought
4155 to be fixed, but wasn't. Now it is, dammit!)
4156 * Fixed bug with units marching across oceans (scuba gear not included. ;-) )
4157 * Market/trade taxes and trade ship payoff figures were added to version.
4158 * "cede" has been removed as a default command.
4159 * Makefile rule was fixed for depend build.
4160 * Fixed bug in mapdist not taking world edges into account nicely enough.
4161 * Added a "scuttle" order for autoscuttling trade ships. Makes using them
4162 easier. Cleaned up scuttle code while in there.
4163 * Fixed bug with scuttling a ship with units on it not scuttling the units
4166 Changes to Empire 4.0.0 - Wed Aug 21 1996
4167 * Initial Wolfpack release - Long live the Wolfpack!!!!
4168 * Cleaned up the build environment. Now all that is needed is to edit the
4169 build.conf file, answer the questions there and type "make <arch>" to
4170 build for a specific architecture. Thus, no more reliance on gnumake
4171 or special shell scripts.
4172 * We are now shipping the pre-built info pages with the server for those who
4173 Don't want to build them. You can also still just type "make" and have
4174 the info pages build, but it doesn't completely work (i.e. rebuild new
4175 Subjects) if you don't have perl5 installed.
4176 * Put in the "help" command that does the same thing as "info".
4177 * Removed C_SYNC. This is done for 2 reasons. 1) None of us like it or
4178 wish to support it. 2) We envision a better scheme for doing similar
4179 things will come along.
4180 * Put in MOB_ACCESS - This allows real-time updating of mobility.
4181 * Put in MARKET - This is the time-based market (yes, still teleports,
4182 but it's not as bad as it was.)
4183 * Lots of the documenation has been updated, but there is more to do.
4184 * Added NO_LCMS, NO_HCMS and NO_OIL options. When any of these options are
4185 enabled, you don't need any of that type of material to build things.
4186 If NO_HCMS is enabled, you don't need HCMS to build bridges, you need
4187 lcms. If both NO_HCMS and NO_LCMS are enabled, then you don't need
4188 any materials to build a bridge.
4189 * There is no mobility cost for assigning missions. But, there is also
4190 no longer any benefit for being on a mission either.
4191 * Damage is the same for all commodities (people too.) This means you
4192 can deity shell/bomb sectors again.
4193 * Units are now dependant on tech. What this means is that their statistics
4194 now increase with tech. In addition, there is only 1 type of each basic
4195 unit now (i.e. just "cavalry" instead of "cavalry 1", "cavalry 2", etc.)
4196 This reflects the idea that as you learn more, you learn how to not only
4197 build better units, but you learn to build units better. :) This also
4198 opens the door for a "lupgrade" command along the same lines as the
4199 "upgrade" command for ships.
4200 * Units now have a minimum mob cost for attacking a sector. Marching
4201 mob costs have not changed.
4202 * Starting units have been removed. This means that at the beginning, people
4203 may live a little longer since their neighbor can't come visiting quite
4205 * Shells are no longer required to build units.
4206 * Mil are no longer required to build units.
4207 * Mil are no longer an intrinsic part of a unit. They are now a loadable
4208 commodity. The way a unit's defense/att bonuses work now are
4209 attack = (att * mil * eff)
4210 defense = (def * mil * eff)
4211 In addition, when a unit takes damage, both the eff and the mil go
4212 down. You can quickly toss in new hacks, but you need to wait to repair
4213 the unit at the update. Thus, you can now look at unit's efficiency
4215 * You need at least 1 mil on a unit to march it (spies are the exception.)
4216 * Units always react if in range and they have the mobility, no matter
4217 what their efficency.
4218 * Units may now march anywhere - in your own sectors, deity owned sectors
4219 or allied sectors, with 1 exception, spies. Also, your units can get
4220 trapped if your ally declares non-alliance with you while your units
4221 are still in his country.)
4222 * Units always march at their speed, efficiency doesn't matter.
4223 * LANDSPIES was added - This creates land unit based spies. Spies may march
4224 anywhere, with a chance of getting caught (except in allied territory.)
4225 See "info Spies" for more info on them.
4226 * Planes may now be based out of allied airports. Landing planes on
4227 ships/sectors you do not own no longer changes thier owner. You can only
4228 land on owned/allied sectors/ships, and you may only
4229 fly/bomb/para/recon/drop from owned/allied sectors. So, if a country
4230 you are allied with goes hostile at you, your planes are now stuck there.
4231 Note that if you are using an allied airport, their commodities get
4232 sucked up, not yours (obviously.)
4233 * Planes are now tech-based. Their statistics increase as their tech
4234 increases. Deleted extraneous planes.
4235 * There is a new toggle, "techlists", which allows you to see what you
4236 can build/stats/capabilities sorted by tech instead of groupings.
4237 * Ships are now tech-based. Their statistics increase as their tech
4238 increases. Deleted extraneous ships.
4239 * Che can now be lessened by making happiness. If you have more happiness
4240 than your conquered populace, they don't fight as hard or recruit as
4241 much. If you have less than them, they fight harder and recruit more.
4242 It's not much though - it ranges from 2.0 in your favor to only 0.8
4243 against you (whereas it was always 1.0 before.) So, it definitely
4244 favors the attackers to make lots of happy now.
4245 * Bridgeheads can only be built on coasts.
4246 * Players command was fixed so you only see allies, and don't get
4247 approx #'s of players anymore.
4248 * POSIX threads support has been added.
4249 * The attack bmap bug has been fixed.
4250 * BTUs regenerate 3 times faster now.
4251 * GRAB_THINGS is off by default.
4252 * Big nuclear bombs are back, and FALLOUT has been fixed and enabled
4253 as a default (you couldn't make wasteland before with FALLOUT, now
4255 * You can now deliver military and civilians.
4256 * Added SHIP_DECAY option - off by default (turns off ships decaying out
4257 at sea if not enough mil.)
4258 * The reverting owner bug has been fixed in territory, thresh, dist
4259 and deliver. There are probably more, and when found, will be fixed.
4260 * The "sectors don't starve when stopped or broke" bug has been fixed.
4261 * The "people never get truncated" bug has been fixed.
4262 * Added infrastructure to sectors. What this means is that a sector
4263 can now have it's mobility improved by building both roads and
4264 railways. It also means that a sectors defense is now based on the
4265 defensive infrastructure you build into the sector (no more intrinsic
4266 better defenses based on the sector, you determine which sectors are
4267 defended heavily, and which aren't.)
4268 * The defensive value of a sector no longer relies on the efficiency of
4269 the sector. Instead, it relies on the defensive efficiency of the sector.
4270 Thus, the "production" and "defensive" aspects of sectors have been
4272 * "show sect stats" now shows the maximum defensive value for sectors.
4273 * Changed sector structure to take floats for off/def values so we can use
4274 a base of 1 instead of 2.
4275 * Added "improve" and "sinfrastructure" to support the infrastructure
4277 * Added L_TRAIN units which can only travel along railways. Very fast on
4278 efficient railways, slow on non-efficient ones.
4279 * Added the ability for units to carry other units.
4280 * Fixed census (shortened up "fallout" and "coast" to "fall" and "coa".)
4281 * Forts only cost $500 to build and 100 hcms now (since they don't get any
4282 better defenses automagically.)
4283 * Modified "show sect build" to show the costs for building up the
4284 infrastructure of a sector.
4285 * Changed "spy" and the satellite recon stuff (which shows sector stuff for
4286 spyplanes too) to show the new infrastructure stuff, rounded of course.
4287 * Added Drake's info->html scripts, with some modifications, so you can
4288 now type "make html" and have your info pages built as html files too.
4289 This adds a new directory, "info.html", to the build tree.
4290 * Modified upgrade so that planes and land units may now be upgraded.
4291 * Added pstat command to list the statistics of your planes.
4292 * Added lstat command to list the statistics of your land units.
4293 * Added sstat command to list the statistics of your ships.
4294 * Added nmap command to show a map of your sectors after their new
4295 designations have taken place.
4299 .SA "Clients, Server, Infrastructure, Sectors, LandUnits, Planes, Ships"