1 .TH Server "Empire4 Changes"
2 .NA Empire4 "Changes from the Empire3 server to the Empire4 Server"
5 There have been several changes/fixes made to the Empire3 code in the
6 new Empire4 Server. This outlines the various changes and how they
7 will affect you, the player. These were coded as the Wolfpack project,
8 and bug-reports should be sent to <wolfpack@wolfpackempire.com>.
10 Changes to Empire 4.3.32 - Sun Aug 11 12:23:54 UTC 2013
11 * The break command now honors new designation of sanctuaries.
12 * Changes to edit, give, setsector, setresource, swapsector:
13 - Generalize edit to multiple objects: accept
14 <SECTS|SHIPS|PLANES|LANDS|NATS> argument instead of just
15 <SECT|SHIP|PLANE|LAND|NAT>. Obsoletes setsector and setresource.
16 - Make interactive "edit c" detect and handle concurrent updates,
18 - Don't reprint edited object when done with it.
19 - Always print a message describing the actual change. Necessary
20 to give the deity a chance to catch unexpected changes, e.g. a
21 player moving away stuff right before a give command, leaving
22 fewer items than the deity intends to take. Existing messages
23 improved, missing ones added.
24 - Consistently send bulletins to the victim / beneficiary of deity
25 meddling, except when changing stuff mortals can't see.
26 - Report much more deity meddling in the news (subject to option
28 - More robust argument checking. Before, careless deity edits
29 could cause internal errors. Much bounds checking was missing,
30 inconsistent or wrong.
31 - Teleport planes and land units to carrier on load.
32 - Refuse to move planes and land units on carriers.
33 - Fix stack smash in edit l key 'L' that can mess up sector file.
34 - Fix setsector to again print actual landmine change for occupied
35 sectors. Broken in 4.3.31.
36 - Suppress bulletins for acts of god to himself.
37 - Suppress news for acts of god to gods.
38 - Suppress news and bulletins on no-op acts of god.
39 - Always send bulletins from POGO. Name the meddling deity in the
40 bulletin text instead. Inconsistent since Chainsaw.
41 - Make interactive edit accept empty key argument again.
42 - Make interactive edit treat blank input like empty input.
43 - Don't let edit put a land unit or plane on two carriers
44 - Do not disclose when a deity destroys a ship, tell the ex-owner
46 - edit p and u now show the edited unit like edit s.
47 - edit s now shows the edited ship even when its owner is invalid.
48 * Clean up output of satellite, land, sorder and mission for world
49 sizes between 200 and 1998. cutoff and level still have issues
51 * Plug harmless file descriptor leak on OpenBSD with IPv6. Broken in
53 * New doc/contributing explains how to contribute to Empire.
54 * Code refactoring and cleanup.
55 * Info page, manual page and documentation fixes and clarifications.
57 Changes to Empire 4.3.31 - Sun May 12 16:58:34 UTC 2013
58 * Fix read beyond end of conditional argument on missing operand.
59 * Don't put broken links into info pages formatted as HTML.
60 * Permit ships that can drop depth charges, but not fire. No such
61 ships exist in the stock game.
62 * Consistently require guns for dropping depth charges. Before, only
63 the fire command required guns (since 4.3.12 and before 4.0.6).
64 * Change econfig key rollover_avail_max from 0 to 50.
65 * Make sector production more predictable. Commands production and
66 budget are now a bit more accurate.
67 * Fix bugs that messed up xdump lost and xdump trade on big endian
68 hosts (broken in 4.3.8), and made the server fail during startup on
69 most big endian hosts (broken in 4.3.12).
70 * Build process robustness fixes.
71 * Use "Level: Obsolete" to mark obsolete info pages, and drop "info
73 * Server now uses IPv4 format for IPv4-mapped addresses. Simplifies
74 safe use of econfig key privip.
75 * Server logs a few more network connection details.
76 * Fixes and workarounds for econfig key listen_addr "" (which is the
77 default) when the system has both IPv4 and IPv6 addresses
79 - Server accepted only IPv6 connections on Windows and BSDs. Fix
80 to accept IPv4 ones, too.
81 - Except for OpenBSD, where the fix doesn't work. Accept IPv4
82 connections instead of IPv6 ones there, and document how to get
83 IPv6 accepted instead.
84 - Linux systems are frequently configured in a way that makes the
85 server accept only IPv4 connections. Document workaround: use
87 * Change fairland island size probability distribution: roll two dice
88 instead of one. This makes extreme sizes much less likely.
89 * Make fairland record the island number in the deity territory.
90 * Fix extension of market bidding time when high bidder changes.
91 Introduced broken in 4.0.7, with insufficient fixes in 4.0.9 and
93 * Fix market not to mess up ridiculously high unit prices. Has been
94 broken since 4.0.0 introduced the market.
95 * Fix melting of big piles of stuff by ridiculously heavy fallout.
96 Has been broken since fallout exists.
97 * Fix crash on edit s, p, u key 'U' with negative argument.
98 * When a deity builds ships or land units in foreign sectors, they're
99 given to the sector owner. This lets POGO build them, and it's how
100 build works for planes and nukes.
101 * Fix PRNG (pseudo-random number generator) seeding to resist
102 guessing: seed with a kernel random number. If we can't get one,
103 fall back to a hash of high-resolution time and process ID. This
104 should happen only on old systems or Windows. Far worse than a
105 kernel random number, but far better than just low-resolution time.
106 Fairland's seeding used to be low-resolution time and process ID,
107 but regressed in 4.2.20 to just time.
108 * Switch PRNG from BSD random() to Mersenne Twister. This is a is a
109 proven, high-quality PRNG.
110 * Fix tiny error in distribution of some die rolls.
111 * Increase land unit retreat chance and nuclear damage's chance to
112 destroy a nuke by one percentage point, for simplicity.
113 * Merge news items a bit more aggressively.
114 * Fix a year 2038 bug in news item merging.
115 * Retire the nightly build.
116 * New make target check. Just a few tests for now, derived from the
117 smoke test that used to be part of the nightly build.
118 * Really fix accepting connections from "long" IPv6 address. The fix
119 in 4.3.23 could mess up player's host address in player output and
120 logs, and cause extra "Last connection" messages.
121 * Take ship cost into account when picking missile interdiction
122 target. Broken in 4.3.8.
123 * Really fix give, setsector and setresource not to wipe out
124 concurrent updates. The fix in 4.3.27 was insufficient.
125 * Fix setsector not to disclose number of landmines to occupier.
126 * Make capital fail more nicely when the sector is unsuitable. Its
127 argument must now be a single sector. Before, it silently picked
128 the first suitable one when the argument selected several. Has
129 always been that way, and never documented.
130 * Changes to option GODNEWS:
131 - Deity command give could downgrade the deity's relations to the
132 sector owner when GODNEWS was enabled. No more.
133 - Likewise, deity commands edit and setsector can no longer
134 downgrade the victim's relations to the deity.
135 - News enabled by GODNEWS no longer affect news headlines.
136 * Fix bomb, drop, fly, paradrop, recon and sweep to again accept a
137 destination sector equal to the assembly point. Broken in 4.3.27.
138 * Fix portability bug in configure test for Windows API.
139 * More user friendly server startup: journal open errors are detected
140 while the server still runs in the foreground, which makes it
141 possible to complain to stderr and to exit unsuccessfully.
143 - Forbid selling conquered populace. Only relevant when the deity
144 allows selling civilians, which is probably a bad idea.
145 - Permit selling military by default.
146 - Forbid selling ships and land units carrying unsalable cargo.
147 * Scrapping ships and land units now spreads the plague
148 * Don't let scrap give away civilians, kill them off instead.
149 * Pilots and air cargo now spread the plague.
150 * Don't let fly and drop give away civilians.
151 * Fix fly to permit flying civs to a carrier in an occupied sector.
153 * Don't let planes fly to a carrier without sufficient space.
154 Before, planes that didn't fit were teleported home, which could be
155 abused. Broken in 4.3.17. Almost the same bug was previously
157 * Fix tend to foreign ships:
158 - Refuse to tend civilians to foreign ships.
159 - Don't leak friendly foreign ships' commodity cargo.
160 - Continue with remaining target ships after skipping a foreign one
161 when tending a negative amount of commodities.
162 All broken when Chainsaw 2 added tending to allies.
163 * march sub-command 'm' can now sweep own landmines.
164 * Land units no longer sweep allied landmines, except when executing
165 march sub-command 'm'. They don't hit them since 4.3.27. Sweeping
167 * Fix bmap commands not to parse empty flags argument as "revert".
169 * Code refactoring and cleanup.
170 * Info page fixes and clarifications.
172 Changes to Empire 4.3.30 - Tue May 22 18:34:52 UTC 2012
173 * Disable damage to base sector or ship when missile explodes on
174 launch for now, because damage done to other missiles there can be
175 wiped out in some cases. Broken in Empire 2.
176 * Fix navigate and march not to wipe out concurrent updates.
177 Abusable, but probably not worthwhile.
178 * Fix some buffer overruns in fairland. Has always been broken.
179 * Fix arm to require nuke and plane to be in the same sector. A
180 remote nuke got teleported to its plane when the plane moved.
182 * Change login command kill (used by client option -k) to kill less
183 ruthlessly: send a flash message and try to flush output, exactly
184 like a server shutdown does.
185 * Fix server shutdown to wait for player threads to reach a safe
186 state. Before, player threads raced with shutdown, and failed to
187 update the treasury, record play time, and write log entries when
188 they lost. Bug goes back to Empire 2. Patched partially or
189 unsuccessfully in 4.2.10, 4.2.12, 4.2.20, 4.3.6, 4.3.10 and 4.3.23.
190 The race was hard to lose in practice, until an unrelated
191 "simplification" in 4.3.23 could get player threads stuck sending
192 output after shutdown aborted a command.
193 * Idle timeout changes:
194 - The grace period for clients to complete login and logout is now
195 separate from the idle timeout. Configurable with new econfig
196 key login_grace_time, default is 120 seconds.
197 - The idle timeout for visitors is now separate from the one for
198 players. Configurable with new econfig key max_idle_visitor,
199 default is five minutes.
200 - Fix the idle timeout when the connection gets stuck sending
201 output. Broken in 4.3.20.
202 - Idle timeout during execute now terminates the connection, not
203 just the execute command.
204 * Fix stack smash in build. Remote hole! Broken when Empire 2 added
205 the confirmation prompt.
206 * Fix stack smash in scrap and scuttle. Remote hole! Broken when
207 Chainsaw added the confirmation prompt. Additionally, the
208 confirmation prompt is misleading when the player supplies
209 conditionals. Redesign the flawed prompt.
210 * Fix execute's echo of the command. Broken in 4.3.28.
211 * The mobility cost of retreating a defending land unit was
212 calculated for an uninitialized sector. This could charge
213 incorrect mobility, prevent retreat, or, if the stars align just
214 right, crash the server. Broken in 4.3.6.
215 * Commands cutoff, headlines, land, lstat, motd, neweff, payoff,
216 qorder, sorder, and wall now behave like the other information
217 query commands when the player's connection can't take more output:
218 they pause to let other code run.
219 * Revised command permissions:
220 - arm and disarm no longer require money, for consistency with the
221 other commands to move stuff around.
222 - satellite no longer requires money, for consistency with lookout,
223 radar, sonar and skywatch.
224 - qorder, sorder, survey and test no longer require a capital, for
225 consistency with the other commands that report on stuff the
227 - start and stop no longer require a capital, for consistency with
228 the other commands to control production.
229 - fortify now requires a capital, for consistency with mission,
231 - Anybody may now use country, echo and financial.
232 - Visitors can no longer use census, commodity, map, nmap,
233 sinfrastructure (useless without sectors), read (visitors don't
234 get any telegrams), and change (always failed).
235 - Players can no longer use map and nmap before break. This is
236 consistent with all the other commands to examine the
237 environment. It also prevents people from trying multiple
238 unbroken countries in a blitz to find the one with the nicest
240 - Players can now use resource before break, just like census.
241 * read could swallow the first telegram header when showing the
242 telegrams that arrived while waiting for the player to confirm
243 deletion. Broken in 4.3.29.
244 * Fix 'm' in path argument of explore, move, transport:
245 - Don't moan about deprecated argument syntax ('m' without a space
246 before its argument) even when there's no argument.
247 - Recognize the flags argument again.
250 - Command market is no longer available to visitors, because it
251 triggers execution of trades that have become ready.
252 - Fix a race condition that could cause commodity trades to be
253 executed multiple times. Abusing this to duplicate commodities
254 seems tricky, but possible. Broken in Empire 3.
255 - Don't expropriate sellers of units. POGO got the the money, the
256 telegrams and made the news, the seller got nothing. Broken in
258 * Login command quit and server shutdown could lose player output.
259 4.3.23 tried to fix the shutdown case, but the fix was incomplete.
260 * Fix login command quit to really quit. It sometimes just swallowed
261 buffered input, at least on some systems.
262 * 4.2.22's fairer command scheduling failed to cover the execute
264 * When a client shuts down input transmission to log out, output
265 could get lost. Our client never does that.
266 * Don't skip post command treasury update and status notification on
267 EOF from player, after quit command, and when command is aborted by
268 server shutdown. An unluckily timed EOF or shutdown can deprive a
269 player of money gained from scuttling tradeships or sacking a
270 capital. Can be abused to build bridges and infrastructure free of
271 charge. Can also be abused to designate sectors for free, but the
272 stock game's sector types are all free anyway. Has always been
274 * Fix client not to send an empty line on player interrupt (normally
275 ^C) before the first command. This was missed in 4.3.26.
276 * Code and info page cleanup.
277 * Documentation fixes.
279 Changes to Empire 4.3.29 - Fri Jan 20 19:20:20 UTC 2012
280 * drop and fly from carrier could fail to load last civilian or
282 * Telegram and announcement changes:
283 - wire no longer loops to show announcements that arrived while
284 waiting for the player to confirm deletion.
285 - At most five seconds worth of messages are now squashed together
286 into one. Before, only the time between adjacent telegrams was
287 limited, not the total time.
288 - When telegrams arrived while read was waiting for the player to
289 confirm deletion, and we then showed them, we nevertheless
290 claimed "you have new telegrams" before the next command prompt.
291 Only with toggle inform off. Known bug since Empire 2.
292 - Fix read not to clobber asynchronous notification of telegrams
293 arriving while waiting for the player to confirm deletion.
294 - Fix wire not to reset number of pending telegrams with toggle
295 inform on. Broken when Empire 2 introduced toggle inform.
296 - The number of pending announcements was off when announcements
297 were squashed together.
298 - More careful error handling and logging.
299 * Ensure all of an update's output goes into a single production
301 - Avoid splitting it up when the update is slow. Empire 2 already
302 did that for the number of pending telegrams, but not for read.
303 - Don't turn parts of it into BULLETINs. Autonav and sail could do
305 * files now creates POGO with user interface flags beep, coastwatch,
306 sonar and techlists set, for consistency with add.
307 * Change newcap back to not wiping the country (it wiped since
308 4.3.12). Additionally, leave levels and telegrams alone.
309 * Changes to deity command add:
310 - Require confirmation for unadvisable actions.
311 - Refuse to touch a country while it's being played.
312 - Don't crash on negative country number.
313 - Create deities with money, just like files creates POGO.
314 - Always reset the country completely, not just when adding a
316 - Rename argument "new" to "player". Keep recognizing "new" for
317 now, but deprecate it.
318 - Drop argument "active". If you really want to create a player
319 country without a capital, add the player country normally, then
320 activate it with edit instead of newcap.
321 - Drop the obscure sector check and wipe option. If you really
322 need to wipe out a country, there's much more to wipe than just
324 - Drop the undocumented land unit destruction feature.
325 * Permit no-op country name change again. Accidentally outlawed in
327 * Plug a few minor memory and file descriptor leaks.
328 * Fix use-after-free when plane gets shot down or aborted in
329 dogfight. Broken in 4.3.27.
331 * Info page and manual page fixes.
333 Changes to Empire 4.3.28 - Sat Jul 16 11:30:53 UTC 2011
334 * Don't let POGO (#0) navigate dead ships, and march dead land units.
335 The ghosts even got sighted and interdicted, and could hit mines.
336 Has always been that way.
337 * llook can't see land units and planes loaded on land units anymore.
338 * Fix board to ignore land units loaded on land units when testing
339 whether a sector can board. Broken in 4.0.17.
340 * Fix transport to reject planes loaded on land units. The plane
341 remained on its carrier. When the land unit moved, the plane was
342 teleported right back to it. Broken since Chainsaw 3 added land
344 * Fix lradar not to let land units loaded on land units use radar.
345 Broken since 4.0.0 added trains.
346 * Fix strength to ignore land units loaded on land units. Broken in
348 * Fix navigate and march to find paths longer than a few sectors
349 again (7 for 64 bit hosts, 3 for 32 bit hosts). Broken in 4.3.27.
350 * march sub-command 'i' now shows number of military and land units
352 * New server option -F to force start even when state looks bad.
353 Risks crashes and further corruption, but gives deities a chance to
354 fix up a bad game state with edit commands and such.
355 * empdump -x no longer refuses to export game state that looks bad.
356 Gives deities another tool to fix up a bad game state.
357 * Land units loaded on land units fight che again, as they used to
359 * When a land unit dies fighting che, land units loaded on it get
360 unloaded, and planes loaded on it die. Before, the update left
361 them stuck on their dead carrier. Impact like the next item.
362 Abusable. Broken since Chainsaw 3 added land units.
363 * The update no longer destroys ships, planes and land units for lack
364 of maintenance. Before, it left any embarked planes, land units
365 and nukes on their dead carrier. In this state, units behaved as
366 if their carrier was still alive, with additional protection from
367 the fact that a dead carrier can't be damaged or boarded. If
368 another unit with the same number got built, it picked up the stuck
369 cargo. The cargo got teleported to its new carrier when the
370 carrier moved. Abusable, but it involves going broke, so it's
371 rarely practical. Slightly more practical before 4.3.6 removed
372 budget priorities. Broken for ships and land units when Empire 2
373 added their maintenance cost, and for planes when 4.3.3 replaced
374 nuclear stockpiles by nuke units.
375 * Fix bogus internal error triggered by navigate and march
376 sub-commands 'r', 'l' and 's'. Broken in 4.3.27.
377 * Fix client not to reject redirections and execute containing
378 non-ASCII characters with a bogus scary warning when using UTF-8.
379 * Fix execute not to mangle non-ASCII characters in the argument when
380 prompting for it while login option utf-8 is on.
381 * Fix handling of non-ASCII and control characters in batch files.
382 * Conversion from UTF-8 to ASCII ate the character following a
383 replaced non-ASCII character. Buffer overrun possible if the
384 terminating zero gets eaten. Could happen in players, read, flash,
386 * Fix handling of empty commands:
387 - Time used was not updated.
388 - Mortal player wasn't logged off for game hours, game down, and
390 - Notifications were delayed: going broke, becoming solvent, new
391 telegrams (toggle inform off only), new announcements, capital
393 * Minor tweaks to nightly build.
394 * Server's and empdump's sanity checking of configuration and game
395 state is now more rigorous.
396 * Deity xdump no longer dumps unused countries' realms.
397 * Remove option LANDSPIES. Deities can customize the land table to
399 * Remove option TRADESHIPS. Deities can customize the ship table to
401 * Configuration table changes (builtin and custom):
402 - Rows must be in ascending uid order.
403 - Omitting rows in tables item, sect-chr and infrastructure is no
405 - Custom tables now replace the builtin table completely. Before,
406 omitted rows defaulted to the builtin version, except at the end
407 of a table. Commenting out unwanted stuff just works now.
408 - Permit custom table product having fewer than 14 entries.
409 - Reject custom tables where customization has no effect (updates,
410 table, meta, all symbol tables) or where it's unsafe (news-chr).
411 - Input is checked more rigorously.
413 - Don't touch plane file when import fails.
414 - Refuse import of incorrectly sized table instead of silently
415 creating one the server will reject.
416 - Replace old state completely. Before, omitted rows in the dump
417 defaulted to the old state, except at the end of a table.
418 - Input is checked more rigorously.
419 * Fix xdump updates not to dump bogus extra updates.
420 * Fix use-after-free when a plane got shot down or aborted by flak.
422 * Friendlier diagnostics in the build command.
423 * Fix build to set nuke's tech exactly like for ships, planes and
424 land units. It's not currently used for anything.
425 * Research required for nukes was slightly off sometimes due to
427 * Bridge building required 0.005 tech less than advertised, fix.
428 * "show nuke" now obeys toggle techlists.
429 * Fix "show land s" to show columns xpl and lnd again. Broken in
431 * Code refactoring and cleanup.
432 * Documentation on custom tables and xdump updated.
435 Changes to Empire 4.3.27 - Sun Apr 17 11:36:29 UTC 2011
436 * License upgrade to GPL version 3 or later.
437 * Fix buy not to wipe out concurrent updates. Can be abused to
438 duplicate commodities.
439 * Don't let fighters, SAMs and ABMs intercept while on trading block.
440 * Don't let missiles interdict ships or land units while on trading
442 * Fix client to log long input lines untruncated.
443 * Fix client crash for long input lines.
444 * info subject pages now mark unusually long pages with a !.
445 * The edit command keys deprecated in 4.3.15, 4.3.17 and 4.3.20 are
447 * Fix give, setsector and setres not to wipe out concurrent updates.
448 * Fix explore, move, test, transport not to ignore spaces in path
449 arguments. Broken in 4.3.7. Deprecate use of 'm' without space
451 * Improvements to map drawing commands:
452 - Don't fail silently when asked to draw a map around an invalid
453 unit, explain the problem.
454 - Deprecate bmap flag "r". Use (a prefix of) "revert" instead.
455 - bmap flags following "t" are no longer ignored. However, info
456 pages previously documented an argument "true" in addition to
457 flag "t". To keep that working, keep ignoring flags following
458 "t" when they're bad. But deprecate that usage.
459 - Reverting the bmap no longer draws a map.
460 - Bad conditionals could make the commands misinterpret their first
462 - The commands now fail when they reject their second argument.
463 * The xdump syntax deprecated in 4.3.12 is now gone.
464 * Fix satellite to fail on bad conditionals instead of ignoring them.
465 * Journal improvements:
466 - Optional logging of output.
467 - Long lines are no longer truncated.
468 - Login phase input is now logged, too.
469 - Commands are now logged. Allows making sense of input without
471 * Option BRIDGETOWERS is now disabled by default.
472 * Bridge towers now take 300 hcms to build, down from 400.
473 * Fix stop orders to expire even when the country is broke. Broken
475 * Fix march and navigate not to advise on "legal directions" when
478 - Much faster, especially for distribution, i.e. where it matters
479 most. Speedups in excess of 30x have been observed for updates
480 taken from real games.
481 - Old land path finder leaked memory occasionally.
482 - Old land path finder overran buffers for very long paths. A
483 malicious player can arrange sufficiently long paths, but it
484 takes a lot of land. Distribution, the distribute command, land
485 unit reaction, and automatic supply now handle arbitrary long
486 paths. Commands explore, move, test, transport, march, navigate
487 and path now handle paths up to 1023 characters. Command
488 bestpath shows paths longer than 1023 characters with the tail
490 - Old sea and air path finder treated destinations as unreachable
491 when the best path was longer than 99 characters. Command sorder
492 now handles arbitrary long paths. Commands bomb, drop, fly,
493 paradrop, recon, sweep and sail now handle paths up to 1023
494 characters. Autonav considers up to 1023 characters at the
495 update. Planes can fly missions up to 1023 sectors from their
497 * Automatic supply charged mobility for the path back to the source
498 instead forward to the sink.
499 * Make bestpath work for deities in foreign land.
500 * More robust savecore example script.
501 * Fix buffer overruns in the lookout, spy, map and nmap commands when
502 WORLD_X * WORLD_Y is not a multiple of 16.
503 * The path command's maps weren't always fitted to the path
504 correctly. Broken in 4.3.17.
505 * Land units no longer hit allied mines.
506 * Change sharebmap with yourself to do nothing instead of telling you
507 you're not friendly to yourself.
508 * You can now flash yourself. Enjoy!
509 * A race condition could make the flash command claim an ally was not
510 logged on when he was. Hard to trigger outside the lab.
511 * The flash command no longer prints "Flash sent" for deities. It's
512 annoying. It never did that for mortals.
513 * Plug memory leaks in mission code on a number of conditions:
514 - Submarines moving where own planes would interdict hostile
516 - Ground combat where countries hostile to one of the parties would
517 support if relations were right (allied to one party, at war with
519 - Ships or land units moving within hostile missile mission op
521 - Any player action within marine missile mission op areas that
522 could trigger the missile owners' missions.
524 - When you ordered a sector to attack with military, but lost the
525 sector before the attack was executed, and the new owner was
526 allied to you, the server got confused: it let the military
527 attack even though they were already dead, but not occupy.
528 - When you ordered a land unit to attack from an allied sector, and
529 the sector got lost before the attack was executed, the server
530 reported things as if you had owned the sector yourself. The
531 land unit still attacked when the new owner was also allied to
533 - When a land unit attacked out of an allied sector, its mobility
534 cost was computed as if the ally owned the land unit. Attacking
535 sectors old-owned by that ally was too cheap, and taking back
536 one's own was too expensive.
537 * Fix trade ships to pay off in own harbor. Broken in 4.3.17.
538 * Remove option SLOW_WAR. It hasn't been enabled in a public game
539 for years, and the code implementing it was buggy.
540 * Fix a bug in sail that limited the sail path to 27 instead of the
541 intended 28 characters.
542 * Fix race condition in transmission of flash and telegram
543 information messages that could double output and possibly crash
545 * Planes get to sweep and sonar only after flak and interception.
546 * Don't limit the radar command's range to fit its output into a
547 world map without clipping. The limiting goes back to Chainsaw 2.
548 * Make flak vs. pinpoint bombing consistent with ordinary flak:
549 - 4.3.6 reduced the plane abort chance on damage, but missed the
550 additional flak vs. pinpoint bombing. Fix that.
551 - Fix to charge mobility appropriate for damage.
552 * Prettier flak damage reporting.
553 * Fix bugs that could cause bmap updates from recon and satellite to
555 * Fix lookout to properly report sector ownership to deities.
556 * Suppress bogus messages deities with non-zero country number got
557 when attempting to navigate foreign ships or march foreign land
558 units. Such deity use hasn't worked since Empire 2.
559 * Deities can no longer fly foreign planes. It didn't fully work
560 since Chainsaw 3, and can trigger internal errors since 4.3.11.
561 * Don't split lines over several bulletins. The read command
562 normally merges these bulletins, but if they are more than five
563 seconds apart (clock jumped somehow), we get a bulletin header in
564 the middle of a line. Broken since Empire 2.
565 * Don't beep when plane, land unit or nuke die on a collapsing
566 bridge. Not nice, because it could beep many times, and could put
567 beeps in bulletins. Beeping was added in 4.0.18.
568 * Minor improvements to nuclear damage reporting.
569 * When a deity dropped a foreign nuke, parts of the output went to
570 the owner of the nuke instead of the deity.
571 * When a player triggered a foreign missile launch (mission or
572 interception), and the missile exploded on launch, part of the
573 report went to the player instead of the missile owner. This
574 disclosed the missile owner's origin. Broken in Empire 2.
575 * When autonav reported to a ship owner that it can't load or unload
576 foreign civilians, it used the sector owner's coordinate system.
577 This disclosed the sector owner's origin. Abusable.
578 * When nuclear damage bounced off a sanctuary, the bulletin to the
579 sanctuary owner used the attacker's coordinate system. This
580 disclosed the attacker's origin.
581 * When a deity used sweep, lmine, sail or sabotage with a foreign
582 plane, land unit or ship, its location was reported in the foreign
584 * When a deity asked for a foreign nation report, the capital
585 location was reported in the foreign coordinate system.
586 * Code refactoring and cleanup.
587 * Info file improvements.
589 Changes to Empire 4.3.26 - Mon May 24 16:37:40 UTC 2010
590 * Land units loaded on ships or land units can no longer fight che.
591 * When foreign land units were present, a che revolt could damage
592 them instead of the defending land units. This could let defenders
593 survive the revolt. They were captured or blown up if che took
595 * Fix che revolt to damage only land units that actually fight
596 * Fix loading x-light missiles on ships without capability plane.
597 These ships could only use their x-light slots for x-light planes,
598 not their plane slots. Broken in 4.3.17.
599 * Update bmap when nuclear detonation makes wasteland.
600 * Fix fly and drop to report discarded cargo items correctly.
601 * New client option -s to specify server host and port.
602 * Hitting landmines could crash the server. When not, the damage
603 reduction for capability engineer was applied unpredictably.
605 * Fix retreat and lretreat condition 'c'. Broken in 4.3.16.
606 * coastwatch and skywatch could see too far. Up to one sector for
607 practical radar ranges.
608 * skywatch now reports satellite uids. The uid is required for
609 launching a-sats since 4.3.23.
610 * Fix client not to send an empty line of input before aborting the
611 command on player interrupt (normally ^C).
612 * Fix sabotage not to kill the spy every time. Broken in 4.3.17.
614 * Info page fixes, manual page improvements.
616 Changes to Empire 4.3.25 - Sun Mar 21 08:27:37 UTC 2010
617 * Hitting seamines could crash the server. When not, the damage
618 reduction for capability sweep was applied unpredictably. Broken
620 * When an interdiction did damage other than collateral damage, the
621 planes that intercepted it from interdicted carriers used no
622 petrol. 4.3.24 fixed only the "no damage" case.
623 * Ship anti-missile defense failed to charge shells when the ship was
624 interdicted. The fix in 4.3.24 covered only launch.
625 * Fix a bug in navigate and march that let players lay mines free of
626 charge. Also fix them not to prompt for the number of mines.
627 * Missile exploding on launch could not damage its base if it was
628 armed with a nuke. Broken in 4.3.23.
629 * When a torpedo attack triggered a return torpedo, the news reported
630 it to be fired by the attacker instead of the defender.
631 * Interdiction attacked submarines with surface-only weapons. Broken
633 * Fix a bug in lradar, path, radar, route, satellite, sect and survey
634 that could leak maps to other players. Broken in 4.2.0. Fixed in
635 4.2.8 for bmap, lbmap, lmap, map, nmap, pbmap, pmap, sbmap and smap
637 * files could clobber the game when reading confirmation fails.
638 * fairland no longer rejects small worlds without trying.
640 Changes to Empire 4.3.24 - Tue Jan 26 21:29:14 UTC 2010
641 * The client sometimes hung under Windows when the server closed the
642 connection. Broken in 4.3.23.
643 * Fix navigate and march not to crash the server when a path argument
644 consists of a valid path plus whitespace. Broken in 4.3.7.
645 * When a client sent a blank line in the login phase, the server
646 crashed on some systems.
647 * Fix crash bug in bomb, drop, fly, paradrop, recon and sail. Broken
649 * Fix bogus internal error on escort, recon, and satellite launch.
650 Mostly harmless, as error recovery worked fine. Broken in 4.3.23.
651 * Stop ship and land unit movement on interdiction even when it does
653 * When an interdiction did no or only collateral damage, the planes
654 that intercepted it from interdicted carriers used no petrol, and
655 interdicted land units were immune to collateral damage.
656 * The limit for the number of sectors, ships, planes, land units,
657 nukes, and so forth is now large enough not to matter. It used to
658 be 32768 on common machines. The sector limit was introduced in
659 4.3.12. World x- and y-size are still limited to 65536 on common
661 * News use much less space, and thus I/O. Space was wasted in
662 4.3.12. Side effects of the change:
663 - Expiry of old news no longer updates news timestamps. Updating
664 timestamps was wrong, because it defeated incremental xdump news.
665 - The empdump utility can no longer update timestamps of imported
666 news. Unfortunate, as it breaks incremental xdump news.
667 * New news selector duration, the time span covered by this news item
669 * ABMs failed to charge supplies when their sector was the
670 intercepted missile's target. The stock game's ABMs use no
672 * Ship anti-missile defense failed to charge shells when the ship was
673 the missile's target.
674 * Code refactoring and cleanup.
676 Changes to Empire 4.3.23 - Sun Dec 13 16:34:49 UTC 2009
677 * Fix missile interception not to intercept tactical and marine
678 missiles attacking missiles or satellites. No such missiles exist
679 in the stock game. Interception of tactical ABMs could crash the
680 server. Broken in Empire 2.
681 * Missiles missing their target do collateral damage again. Was
682 disabled because of bugs in 4.0.18 for manual launch and in 4.3.16
683 for automatic launch.
684 * News reported victim as actor for sub-launched anti-sat and ABM.
685 * Defense value of missiles vs. ABMs and satellites vs. anti-sats
686 failed to improve with tech.
687 * Fix a bug that let missiles interdict ships outside their op area.
688 This could happen when a group navigating together was partly
690 * Only bomb strategic and launch at sector can use nukes. Before,
691 they could also be used by missions, bomb pinpoint, and launch at
692 ships, but there were several bugs and inconsistencies, and the
693 code was messy. The arm command now rejects marine missiles in
694 addition to satellites, ABMs and SAMs, and clears the mission. The
695 mission command now rejects planes armed with nukes.
696 * Missiles exploding on launch pad no longer set off their nukes.
697 * The launch command now more accurately reports why a missile can't
698 be equipped. It no longer draws supplies automatically.
699 * Manually launched anti-sat now always kills when it hits, for
700 consistency with automatically launched ones.
701 * Don't permit nukes on satellites, ABMs and SAMs. Nukes on
702 satellites could be armed and disarmed even in orbit. Nukes on
703 ABMs and SAMs were lost without effect when their missile
704 intercepted. The stock game is not affected, because its
705 satellites, ABMs and SAMs all have zero load.
706 * Remove obsolete plane capabilities stealth and half-stealth. Not
707 used by the stock game.
708 * Penalize fighter combat value for any load, not just bombs. The
709 stock game's fighters can't carry anything but bombs.
710 * Make bomb work for non-tactical cargo bomber. No such planes exist
712 * Revised cargo plane rules: a cargo flight can be either an airlift
713 or an airdrop now. Airlifts carry more cargo than airdrops. A
714 cargo drop or paradrop with a non-VTOL plane is an airdrop.
715 Anything else is an airlift. This makes paradrop loads consistent
716 with drop loads. Paradrop with VTOL transports now carries twice
717 the punch, and drop with non-VTOL transports hauls less than fly.
718 In particular, the stock game's tr can't drop guns anymore.
719 * Enforce plane selection rules more tightly:
720 - bomb command can select only planes with capability bomber or
721 tactical. Before, other planes with non-zero load flew along,
722 but their bombs were silently lost.
723 - sweep command can select only planes with capability sweep.
724 Before, other planes performed ordinary reconnaissance instead.
725 - drop command can select only planes with capability cargo.
726 Before, other planes flew along but dropped nothing.
727 * Fix paradrop to fail without destroying the paratroopers when the
728 player owns the target sector.
729 * Launching an anti-sat now takes the target plane as argument.
730 Before, it took a sector argument, and targeted the lowest-numbered
731 satellite there. Rather inconvenient when your own satellite masks
733 * Remove option PINPOINTMISSILE. Deities can customize the plane
734 table to disable marine missiles.
735 * Ridiculously impotent nukes could do unpredictable interdiction
736 damage. No such nukes exist in the stock game.
737 * The production command could mispredict resource-depleting level
738 production. No such products exist in the stock game. In fact,
739 they'd be highly unusual.
740 * The update could crash or corrupt the game when a (misconfigured)
741 product depleted resource "none".
742 * Revamp the Windows port based on ideas stolen from Gnulib. Share
743 the code between server and client.
744 * Don't log out player when update aborts a command under Windows.
745 Broken in 4.3.20, and not fully fixed in 4.3.21.
746 * Fix accepting connections from hosts with "long" IPv6 address. The
747 internal buffer had insufficient space.
748 * Delay shutdown up to 3s to let player output buffers drain.
749 * Fix a race between main thread and player threads, which could
750 theoretically make the server crash on start.
751 * Clean up synchronization between commands, update and shutdown, and
752 when player threads sleep on I/O.
753 * Clean up the cruft that has accumulated in and behind the empio
754 interface, and, to a lesser degree, the empthread interface.
755 * Fix time difference underflows in pthread and Windows code. They
756 could potentially cause hangs, although none have been observed.
757 * Make budget's "Sector building" line look better.
758 * Make sector maintenance cost configurable. New sect-chr selector
759 maint. Capitals now pay maintenance regardless of efficiency.
760 * Overhaul show sect b.
761 * Fix mine production resource limit for sector peffic != 100. This
762 affects mountains in the stock game, but only with an impractically
763 large number of ETUs per update.
764 * Code refactoring and cleanup.
765 * Info file fixes and improvements.
767 Changes to Empire 4.3.22 - Sat Apr 25 11:56:29 UTC 2009
768 * Fix a Windows client bug that could lead to hangs, at least with
769 some versions of the C run-time. Broken in 4.3.11.
770 * Allow building without curses terminfo. Highlighting in the client
772 * Really fix bomb not to wipe out plane updates made while it asked
773 for pinpoint targets. The fix in 4.3.21 didn't cover escorts.
774 * Fix tend land not to wipe out concurrent updates.
775 * Automatic supply fixes:
776 - Ships with just two shells could fire a torpedo to return fire or
778 - Ships with just one shell could use their anti-missile defense.
779 - Land units were considered in supply even when they had not quite
780 enough supplies. Such land units could defend without penalty,
783 * Fix update to take dead units off carriers.
784 * Standalone client distribution built empire instead of empire.exe
785 for Windows. Broken in 4.3.0.
786 * Fix client to abort script execution on SIGINT.
787 * Fix Windows client not to hang on EOF on standard input when that
789 * Fix a client bug that could make it hang when EOF on standard input
790 follows an execute command closely.
791 * Seamines under bridge spans were disabled a long time ago, in
792 Empire 2. The drop command refuses to mine there. Change mine
793 command to do so as well.
794 * Seamines under bridge spans were mistaken for landmines by ground
795 combat, land units retreating from bombs, and non-land unit ground
797 * When a bridge tower collapsed, its landmines magically became
799 * Don't log out player when he interrupts a command. Broken in
801 * Code cleanup and portability improvements.
802 * Info file and documentation fixes.
804 Changes to Empire 4.3.21 - Mon Mar 9 21:34:52 UTC 2009
805 * Fix swapsector not to wipe out concurrent changes to the swapped
807 * Fix a bug in crash dumping that could mess up the journal and, at
808 least in theory, mess up commands info, read, turn, and wire;
809 announcement expiry, and reading of econfig and schedule.
810 * Fix bomb not to wipe out plane updates made while it asked for
812 * When bombing ships with a force containing both planes with and
813 without capability ASW, the bomb command could fail to report
814 presence of submarines, and could refuse to bomb ships when there
815 were only submarines.
816 * Leaving land units behind after a victorious attack could in some
817 cases wipe out changes made to them since the victory.
818 * The timestamp selectors added to commodity, load and trade in
819 4.3.12 could lead to spurious command failures. None have been
820 observed in the wild.
821 * Don't log out player when update aborts a command. Broken in
823 * Code refactoring and cleanup.
825 Changes to Empire 4.3.20 - Fri Feb 20 18:14:20 UTC 2009
826 * Option LOANS is now disabled by default.
827 * Option RAILWAYS is now enabled by default.
828 * Many fixes to automatic supply:
829 - Planes flying interception or support missions, abms intercepting
830 ballistic missiles, and the launch command for missiles and
831 anti-sats could all supply more shells than necessary, lose
832 shells, or conjure them up.
833 - Ships shooting down marine missiles could supply more shells than
834 necessary, or lose shells.
835 - Supply ships could conjure up shells when firing guns using
836 multiple shells, or launching torpedoes, or dropping depth
837 charges, or shooting down marine missiles. No supply ships
838 capable of doing that exist in the stock game.
839 - Supply engineers could conjure up shells when laying mines. They
840 don't exist in the stock game.
841 - load, lload and supply could supply land units with enough food
842 from the sector containing them to starve the sector.
843 - Sectors were charged too much mobility for moving supplies
845 - Land units serving as supply source no longer draw supplies
846 recursively, because the bugs there are too hard to fix to be
848 - Defending and reacting units only checked whether they could draw
849 supplies, but didn't actually draw them.
850 - load, lload, supply, assault and board no longer supply land
851 units from ships carrying them. This feature, added in 4.0.14,
852 was inconsistent with other ways to supply.
853 - Don't use automatic supply to avoid starvation at the update. It
854 adds complexity to the update. How much good it does to players
855 is highly doubtful; certainly nobody can rely on it. It isn't
856 covered by the starvation command. Ships or land units could
857 steal enough food from their sector to make it starve.
858 - lmine could only fetch shells for engineers that use ammo. The
859 stock game's engineers all do.
860 The changes listed for load and lload are actually lies, because
861 supply has been disabled there since 4.3.17.
862 * Don't let an engineer lay mines while it is on a ship or land unit,
863 or in a foreign sector.
864 * Sectors and ships no longer need shells to fire flak.
865 * Use IPv4 and v6 only when suitable interfaces are configured.
866 * Fix turn off not to fail when the message is empty. Broken in
868 * Don't nag the deity about game hours restriction in force all the
870 * Tell deity when the game is down, just like players. Also make the
871 information available in xdump, as game selector down.
872 * Corrupt mailboxes could crash the server.
873 * Fix reject accept. Broken in 4.3.4.
874 * If a player was at a prompt when the deity turned the game down, he
875 was allowed to enter one more command.
876 * Air defense is no longer separate from interception. Putting a
877 plane on air defense now merely changes where it intercepts.
878 Separate air defense added too much pointless complexity. Its
879 implementation violated design assumptions of the intercept code.
880 Because of that, the same plane could intercept both an air defense
881 mission and the planes that triggered it, and the damage it
882 received in the first interception was wiped out.
883 * Intercept the same all along the flight path. In each sector, any
884 country owning the sector, a surface ship or a land unit there gets
885 to intercept. Before, only the sector owner got to intercept,
886 except for the assembly point and the target sector. In the target
887 sector, any country owning surface ships or land units got to
888 intercept in addition to the sector owner. Thus, a sector owner
889 with surface ships or land units there got to intercept twice. The
890 sector owner did not get to intercept at the assembly point,
891 even when it was the target sector.
892 * Spotting rule changes:
893 - Ships and land units now spot overflying planes along all of the
894 flight path instead of just the target sector, and no longer
895 report allied planes.
896 - Planes now spot ships and land units only when flying recon or
897 sweep, and along all of their flight path instead of just the
898 target sector. It still takes a spy plane to identify ships and
900 - Planes now spot ships and land units in a sector even when all
902 - Planes now spot all foreign ships and land units, not just
904 * Fix SAM interception for intercepts other than the first.
905 * Fix air defense and flak over sectors allied to the planes. Air
906 defense was broken in Empire 2. Flak was broken in 4.2.8.
907 * Establishing contact by spotting planes from sectors didn't work.
908 * Fix reconnaissance patrols to use sonar when any capable plane is
909 present. Before, all planes had to be capable.
910 * Fix recon and sweep not to spy after all spy planes are gone.
911 * Fix a bug that made multiple clients running on the same Windows
912 machine interfere with each other. Broken in 4.3.11.
913 * Fix enforcing game hours for players already logged in. Broken in
915 * Fix distribution not to abandon a distribution center by exporting
917 * Many fixes to load, unload, lload and lunload:
918 - Now usable for deities.
919 - Plug loopholes that let you steal foreign commodities by making
920 load/lload unload and unload/lunload load through use of negative
922 - Fix not to let you give away civilians.
923 - You can't use lload in foreign sectors or lunload with foreign
924 land units anymore. Loading stuff in foreign sectors was
925 prohibited already for ships.
926 - lload and lunload now work on foreign land units only when
927 they're explicitly named by uid. This matches behavior of load
929 - Fix to test relations of foreign object's owner to player instead
930 of the other way round.
931 * Make sure land units with maximum mobility can attack mountains.
932 * Fix land unit attack mobility cost. Broken in 4.3.6.
933 * Conditions comparing string-valued selectors like wing to unquoted
934 values are now interpreted more smartly. Before, unquoted strings
935 were prone to be interpreted as selector names even when that made
936 no sense. You still have to disambiguate truly ambiguous cases
937 like w=w for planes, e.g. as wing=w or w='w'.
938 * Fix reporting of shot spies in news. Broken in 4.3.16.
939 * Remove econfig key mission_mob_cost. Questionable feature, and
940 hasn't been used in a long time.
941 * Reserve and escort missions now have an op-area, like all the other
943 * Land units now react only when on a reserve mission. The lrange
944 command is gone. The edit command still accepts and ignores the
945 land unit key 'P' for compatibility, but it is deprecated.
946 * Fix a bug that could mess up mission op-area when the range of
947 ship, plane or land unit on the mission decreases, e.g. through the
949 * Reserve missions no longer give a bonus to reaction range.
951 * Code refactoring and cleanup.
953 Changes to Empire 4.3.19 - Sun Dec 7 23:15:34 UTC 2008
954 * LWP doesn't work with Darwin due to OS bugs, avoid it for now.
955 * Don't let ships double-retreat first on 'i' (injured) and then on
956 'h' (helpless) when shelled.
957 * Fix a bug that suppressed the "sunk!" message. Broken in 4.3.17.
958 * Log out player when maximum time per day is exceeded. Before, he
959 could remain logged in with visitor privileges only, but once
960 logged out could not log back in.
961 * If a player was at a prompt when either game hours restriction
962 started or maximum time per day was exceeded, he was allowed to
963 enter one more command.
964 * Deitying a capital failed to charge money and report news. Broken
966 * Overhaul accounting of play time, fixing minor inaccuracies.
967 * Fix parsing of 24:00 in econfig key game_hours and
969 * New option RAILWAYS.
970 * Che ages just like military reserves (1% per 24 ETUs).
971 * Permit ships to assault the sector they're in.
972 * Sectors eating less than one unit of food don't make one unit of
973 food for free anymore. They still can't starve.
974 * New concept sector terrain. Deities can use it to make sectors
975 other than wilderness redesignatable. See sect.config for more
977 * Represent play time in seconds rather than minutes. This affects
978 xdump: nat selector minused (counting minutes) is replaced by
979 timeused (counting seconds).
980 * Improved nightly build, with additional tests.
982 Changes to Empire 4.3.18 - Sat Oct 18 18:39:17 UTC 2008
983 * Fix building of planes, land units and nukes with uids that have
984 never been used before. This could crash the server on some
985 systems in certain states. Broken in 4.3.17.
986 * Improved nightly build, with restructured and extended tests.
988 Changes to Empire 4.3.17 - Sat Sep 20 16:07:44 UTC 2008
989 * Fix standalone client build for Windows. Broken in 4.3.11.
990 * Disable automatic supply of land units on load for now, it's
991 broken, and can be abused to duplicate supplies.
992 * Make trade show exactly what's on sale, remove option SHOWPLANE.
993 * Stop ships, planes, land units and nukes on violent takeover, just
995 * Wipe orders when ships, planes, land units and nukes are taken over
996 violently or given away peacefully. Fleet, wing, army and mission
997 were already cleared in many, but not all cases. Other orders were
998 never cleared: mission op-areas (visible in xdump), ship autonav
999 orders, ship sail path (including ship to follow and mobility
1000 quota), land unit retreat orders, plane range limit, and land unit
1002 * Fix takeover of stuff by attack, assault, board, lboard, paradrop
1004 - Corrupt land unit file could lead to infinite recursion.
1005 - Take over nuke armed on plane along with the plane. Broken in
1007 - Taking over land units with negative mobility increased mobility
1008 to zero. Ditto for planes embarked on ships or land units.
1009 * Fix a bug that made set and xdump not recognize unused trade lots
1011 * Fix giving away stuff by trading it:
1012 - When an armed nuke is sold separately from its plane, take it off
1013 the plane. You couldn't do that before 4.3.3.
1014 - Give away nuke armed on sold plane along with the plane. Broken
1016 - Don't zero mobility of planes and land units on sold ships.
1017 * Fix giving away stuff by unloading from its carrier: Give away any
1018 nukes armed on planes (broken in 4.3.3) and land units loaded on
1019 land units. The latter can't happen in the stock game.
1020 * Fix giving away stuff by scrapping or scuttling its carrier:
1022 - Disarm the nuke from a plane instead of destroying it.
1023 - Give away any loaded land units and planes, too.
1025 - Fix scuttle to ask for confirmation when scuttling a tradeship in
1026 an unsuitable sector even when the tradeship is pirated. Broken
1028 - Fix scuttle to require 2% harbor efficiency for a trade ship to
1029 pay. Also require at least friendly relations.
1030 - Make autonav refuse scuttle orders in unsuitable sectors.
1031 * Clean up rules on where you can scrap stuff:
1032 - Ships in own or friendly, efficient harbors (relations used not
1033 to matter, contrary to info)
1034 - Planes in own or allied, efficient airfields (friendly used to
1035 work as well, contrary to info)
1036 - Land units in any own or allied sector (relations used not to
1037 matter, and you couldn't scrap them on ships)
1038 Also tell player why something can't be scrapped instead of
1039 ignoring it silently.
1040 * Rewrite the broken code to move land units, planes and nukes along
1041 with their carrier. The old code was a hack that didn't update
1042 timestamps (so incremental dumps didn't pick up the movement), and
1043 it didn't cover all uses. The update, in particular, was prone to
1044 see cargo in old locations, which could screw up repairs.
1045 * Expire lost items at the update instead of continuously.
1046 * Replace econfig key lost_items_timeout by lost_keep_hours.
1047 * Minor Windows threading fixes.
1048 * Journal now uses human-readable names to identify threads.
1049 * Ship and land unit load counters are no longer stored in game
1050 state, because they duplicate information already there. Same for
1051 the type of nuke loaded on a plane. Remove field nuketype from
1052 xdump plane. Clients can simply find the plane's nuke instead.
1053 The edit command still accepts and ignores the plane key 'n' for
1054 compatibility, but it is deprecated.
1055 * Ship and land unit load counts as displayed by ship, sdump, land,
1056 ldump, ship selectors nplane, nxlight, nchoppers, nland, and land
1057 selectors nxlight, nland are now reliable. They used to get out of
1059 * Ship load counts now reflect what is loaded, not how it is stored.
1060 For instance, if a light carrier, capable of carrying 4 x-lights
1061 and 20 light planes carries nothing but 5 sams, we now have
1062 nxlight=5, nplane=0 instead of nxlight=4, nplane=1.
1063 * New cargo lists data structure to let code find loaded planes, land
1064 units and nukes easily and efficiently.
1065 * Revamped upkeep of lost file. It should be reliable now.
1066 * Disable the ill-advised error recovery on sector access that swept
1067 bugs under the carpet rather than recovering from them.
1068 * Occupied sectors no longer revert to the old owner when all
1069 military and land units go away. This feature was added in
1070 Chainsaw 3. It wasn't integrated properly with the che code
1071 (things went wrong when che killed all defenders, but couldn't
1072 convert the sector due to its loyalty), and combat code (if an
1073 attack killed off all local defenders and got defeated by reacting
1074 units, the sector changed ownership anyway, silently).
1075 * Include destination coordinates in interception and plane mission
1077 * Client could misdiagnose redirections and executes as unauthorized,
1078 or die outright. Broken in 4.3.11.
1079 * Fix xdump realm to dump player instead of absolute coordinates.
1080 Disclosed the true origin. Broken in 4.3.0.
1081 * Fix spy to reliably avoid spying same sector more than once.
1082 * The map drawing code could smash the heap when the world was
1084 * When a satellite's launch trajectory was off, its coordinates could
1085 get screwed up, which made it invisible in skywatch.
1086 * Fix several bugs that made the path command screw up when the path
1088 * Fix the default size of the map shown by move, test and transport
1090 * Fix bugs that could make arguments in area or dist syntax miss
1091 ships, planes, land units and nukes at the border of the selected
1092 area, if that area spans the whole world. In sufficiently small
1093 worlds, it could also make radar miss satellites and ships, sonar
1094 miss ships, satellite miss ships and land units, nuclear
1095 detonations miss ships, planes, land units and nukes, automatic
1096 supply miss ship and land unit supply sources, ships and land units
1097 fail to return fire, ships fail to fire support.
1098 * Maps sometimes showed x-coordinates as three lines instead of two
1100 * Improved nightly build, tests in particular.
1101 * Code refactoring and cleanup.
1103 Changes to Empire 4.3.16 - Sat Aug 9 15:56:52 UTC 2008
1104 * Production command incorrectly limited the number of graduates,
1105 happy strollers, technological breakthroughs and medical
1106 discoveries produced by a sector to 999. Broken in 4.2.15.
1107 * Fix a bug in improve that could let you spend more money than you
1109 * Fix work command not to spend more mobility than requested, and to
1110 round mobility use randomly instead of down.
1111 * Commands demobilize, convert and work no longer let you spend more
1112 money than you have. Commands demobilize and convert no longer ask
1113 for confirmation before spending more than half your money. Saving
1114 that feature would have been more work than it's worth.
1115 * Remove undocumented key 'd' at bomb ship, plane and land unit
1117 * Fix land unit flak when pin-bombed to match flak when overflown:
1118 proportional to efficiency, and randomly rounded. Was missed in
1120 * Don't permit bombing of embarked planes and land units.
1121 * Fix capital maintenance to charge at 60% efficiency.
1122 * launch command now requires only 40% plane efficiency, for
1123 consistency with other ways to launch missiles.
1124 * Disable collateral damage when automatically launched missiles miss
1125 their target. Collateral damage was done even when the launch
1126 failed or the missile got intercepted. It's been disabled for
1127 manually launched missiles since 4.0.18, for the same reason.
1128 * Fix a bug that corrupted the lostitems file. Broken in 4.3.12.
1129 * Show command changes:
1130 - Move product information from "show sect c" into new "show
1131 product", and reformat it to be easier to understand.
1132 - New column navigability in "show sect s".
1133 - "show sect s" now shows the packing bonus type instead of
1134 selected packing bonuses. "show item" shows the actual bonuses
1136 - "show sect b" now shows the usual values in addition to unusual
1138 * Fix interdiction to obey op-area for missiles.
1139 * Fix a bug that caused a stale sources.mk to be distributed in the
1140 4.3.14 an 4.3.15 tarballs. The latter does not build out of the
1141 box because of that.
1142 * Don't strip tab characters from quoted command arguments. Broken
1144 * shutdown commands now always take effect immediately. Before, they
1145 could be delayed by up to a minute.
1146 * shutdown could start multiple shutdown threads when you initiated a
1147 shutdown shortly after cancelling one. This screwed up the timing
1149 * Deity syntax of zdone changed, and is now documented in info.
1150 * The threshold command could be tricked into accepting negative
1152 * Fix designate to always write updated bmap to disk.
1153 * Fix bomb to fail on empty <pin|strat> argument instead of flying
1155 * Fix a bug in distribute that screwed up the current sector's
1156 distribution center when the command got aborted.
1157 * Commands arm, bomb, deliver, drop, fire, fly, paradrop, recon,
1158 lmine, order, power, range, sail, shutdown, sweep and tend did not
1159 honor command abortion at some prompts.
1160 * Fix a bug in handling of EOF from client that could bite in the
1162 - EOF at target prompts for bombing commodities, ships, planes and
1163 land units sent the server into an infinite loop that ate all
1165 - EOF at sail's path prompt crashed the server.
1166 - EOF at some prompts in deliver, designate, fly, morale, zdone,
1167 attack and assault didn't abort the command.
1169 * Selector terr is now the same as terr0 for mortal players, and
1170 dterr for deities. This matches how the territory command works.
1171 Unfortunately, this required us to rename xdump sect field terr to
1172 terr0. Sorry about that.
1173 * Fix bomb not to let you bomb dead ships and land units.
1174 * Make the retreat command a bit more helpful on retreat conditions,
1175 and make it fail on bad conditions.
1176 * Fix the mapper scripts. Broken in 4.2.0.
1177 * Fix flying commands not to let planes do double duty as escorts.
1179 * When a minesweeper hit a mine after sweeping, the mine wasn't used
1180 up. If it sank the minesweeper, the code accessed freed memory,
1181 which could clobber the ship file or worse. Broken in 4.0.17.
1182 * Don't let non-light units board ships that can't carry them.
1183 * Capitals can now employ up to 1000 civilians instead of 999.
1184 * Spy command changes:
1185 - Spy now requires sector military. Before, presence of land units
1186 was sufficient, but spies shot were only deduced from sector
1187 military. If you lost more spies than you had sector military,
1188 the rest came back from the dead.
1189 - Spy no longer ignores non-sea sectors without civilians, military
1191 - Remove columns lnd, pln from spy report. The values didn't match
1192 the reported land units and planes, and could leak the presence
1194 - Establish contact when spy succeeds even though the spy was
1196 * Fix news reporting and damage when land units interdict ships in
1197 sectors other than sea.
1198 * Fix land unit return fire damage to ships to take accuracy into
1199 account, like the fire command and interdiction does.
1200 * Remove the inconsistent shelling damage reduction for range. Fire
1201 command got damage reduced by 10-20% with a chance depending on
1202 range ("Wind deflects shells"). Ships interdicting got it reduced
1203 by half. Other ways to shell did not get damage reduced for range.
1204 * Fix ground combat to report defending land units. Broken in 4.3.4.
1205 * Info file and documentation fixes and improvements.
1207 Changes to Empire 4.3.15 - Sun May 18 08:59:30 UTC 2008
1208 * The edit command keys deprecated in 4.3.10 are now gone.
1209 * fairland now obeys game file locks.
1210 * Do not leak world creation time in files utility, because that
1211 facilitates attacks against fairland's PRNG. Broken in 4.3.12.
1212 * Fix starvation not to starve one more than it should. The last man
1213 on a boat or land unit now can't starve anymore.
1214 * Fix a crash bug in satellite. Broken in 4.2.7 and not fixed
1215 correctly in 4.2.12.
1216 * Fix a coordinate normalization bug that could theoretically lead to
1217 buffer overruns and other unpleasantness. None have been
1218 reproduced, though. Broken in 4.3.12.
1219 * Remove option FUEL. The abstract idea of tying ships and land
1220 units to a logistical tether is sound, the concrete implementation
1221 as option FUEL is flawed. It adds too much busy-work to the game
1222 to be enjoyable. It hasn't been enabled in a public game for
1223 years. The code implementing it is ugly, repetitive, and a burden
1224 to maintain. The edit command still accepts and ignores the fuel
1225 keys for compatibility, but they are deprecated.
1226 * Fix pin-bomb not to report subs when there are none.
1227 * You now have to take a capital to capture the victim's money, loans
1228 or market lots. Merely obliterating the capital doesn't cut it.
1229 It still makes the victim lose money, though.
1230 * Fix a bug that could theoretically allow sacking of non-existant
1231 capitals of visitors, deities and such.
1232 * You now gain BTUs and MOB_ACCESS mobility before the first update
1233 again. You didn't since 4.3.10 introduced the ETU clock.
1234 * Fix edit to detect when the edited object changes while it's being
1236 * Fix xdump nat for relations: it got HIDDEN backwards. Broken in
1238 * Fix origin command not to prompt twice for its argument. Broken in
1240 * Info file improvements.
1242 Changes to Empire 4.3.14 - Mon May 5 04:57:03 UTC 2008
1243 * Another round of fixes to the fire command:
1244 - Don't disclose where the target retreated to.
1245 - Charge the target shells for returning fire.
1246 - Always use guns when the target is out of range, even if it's a
1247 submarine. Before, the difference in shell use disclosed whether
1248 the target is a submarine. Loophole opened in 4.3.12.
1249 - Make depth charges again work with just one shell. Failing the
1250 command in that case lets players find out whether the target is
1251 a submarine. Loophole opened in 4.3.12.
1252 - Detect when the firing sector, ship or land unit changes across
1253 the target prompt. Can be abused to duplicate commodities, and
1255 * Fix parsing of anchor-relative time in update schedule. Broken in
1257 * Fix logging of player input in the journal to include command
1258 interruption and EOF.
1259 * Fix oversights in 4.3.12's change to keep track of flying planes:
1260 planes could be erroneously reported damaged by their own ground
1261 strikes. Happened with missions and the launch command.
1262 * Fix load not load hardened missiles.
1263 * Fix harden not to harden missiles loaded on land units.
1264 * New server option -E to choose what to do on recoverable internal
1265 error. You can now make the server dump core and keep going (not
1266 implemented for Windows). New econfig key post_crash_dump_hook to
1267 run a program after crash-dumping. See scripts/savecore for an
1269 * Journal entries are now flushed to disk right away even when the
1270 server is not running in debug mode.
1271 * Don't let land units load trains.
1272 * Allow deity to display power report for all types of countries,
1274 * Fix designate's check for disallowed sector types. Broken in
1276 * Documentation fixes.
1278 Changes to Empire 4.3.13 - Tue Apr 15 19:03:11 UTC 2008
1279 * Work around strptime() lossage on some systems. Fixes the parsing
1280 of the schedule file there.
1281 * New selector maxnoc for xdump version.
1282 * Fix initialization of realms in newcap. Broken in 4.3.12.
1283 * Fix add for status arguments active, god, delete. Broken in
1285 * Info file, manual page and documentation fixes.
1287 Changes to Empire 4.3.12 - Wed Apr 2 05:35:06 UTC 2008
1288 * Fix rounding error in update that could result in more babies than
1289 food permits, and negative food.
1290 * Fix a bug that could lead to unfair thread scheduling under
1292 * Fix ship and land unit missile interdiction and ballistic missile
1293 interception to require a proper base. Before, missiles could
1294 launch from anywhere for that.
1296 - Don't allow launching from unowned sectors.
1297 - Don't destroy missiles stuck on foreign ships.
1298 - Use up the supplies required for launching an asat only when it
1300 - Don't ignore satellites' fuel use.
1301 * Deity command newcap now requires its second argument (sanctuary
1302 coordinates). Before, it tried to pick a suitable location when
1303 none was given. The code implementing this feature had problems,
1304 and it's not worth fixing, because it is obscure, and rarely (if
1305 ever) used: no conscientious deity would use it for a real game,
1306 and for blitzes fairland does a better job.
1307 * Keep track of flying planes properly. This fixes a number of bugs:
1308 - While the bomb command awaited pin-bombing target input from the
1309 player, other players could interact with the pin-bombers and
1310 escorts as if they were sitting in their bases: spy them, damage,
1311 capture, load, unload, or upgrade them, even get intercepted by
1312 them. But any changes to those planes were wiped out when they
1314 - The bomb command could bomb its own escorts, directly (pin-bomb
1315 planes) or through collateral damage, strategic sector damage,
1316 collapsing bridges or nuke damage. The damage to the escorts was
1317 wiped out when they landed.
1318 - If you asked for a plane to fly both in the primary mission and
1319 escort, you got charged fuel for two sorties instead of one.
1320 * Plug memory leaks in plane interception.
1321 * Fix trade not to let the buyer teleport satellites (not in orbit)
1322 and asats to an arbitrary sector. Abusable, because abms
1323 intercepted from anywhere, and satellites could be launched from
1325 * The PRNG seed is now logged in the journal.
1326 * Fix nightly build for Windows.
1327 * Fix crash bug that bit when custom tables contained columns names
1328 that existed, but weren't supposed to be in the custom table.
1329 * New timestamp selector for commodity, country, game, loan, nation,
1330 news, realm, trade, treaty to support incremental xdump.
1331 * Deity commands newcap and add wipe the nation more thoroughly. add
1332 no longer touches relations and flags for status active and god.
1333 * New utility program empdump to export and import game state as
1334 plain text. Check its manual for details, including limitations.
1335 * Plane, ship and land unit stats are no longer stored as game state,
1336 but recomputed from tech and base stats as needed.
1337 * xdump ver is no longer a special case. Syntax "xdump ver" is now
1338 deprecated. Use "xdump version *".
1339 * Fire and torpedo cleanup and bug hunt:
1340 - Plug memory leak in fire command.
1341 - Fix ammunition use when returning fire: resupply could lose
1342 shells when returning fire to multiple targets, and land units
1343 were charged per target instead of just once.
1344 - Interdicting land units now resupply shells automatically, for
1345 consistency with other ways to fire.
1346 - torpedo and fire no longer resupply shells automatically. The
1347 latter used to resupply land units only.
1348 - Land units no longer have to be in supply to fire actively, for
1349 consistency with other ways to fire.
1350 - Submarines with zero mobility can no longer interdict, for
1351 consistency with other ways to torpedo.
1352 - Fix bugs that let submarines without capability torp use
1353 torpedoes to return fire and interdict.
1354 - Fix torpedo command not to require a line of sight for return
1355 fire and depth charges, and to use torpedo range instead of
1356 firing range for return torpedoes.
1357 - Active fire and interdiction didn't work for ships with zero
1358 firing range, even though return fire and support did. No such
1359 ships exist in the stock game.
1360 - Let land units with zero firing range and non-zero firing damage
1361 fire, for consistency with ships. No such units exist in the
1363 - Ships required different numbers of military to operate their
1364 guns for the various kinds of fire. Unify to require 2*N-1
1365 military to fire N guns.
1366 - Ship ammunition use differed for the various kinds of fire.
1367 Unify to use one shell per two guns.
1368 - Forts could fire support even when there were not enough mil.
1369 - Fix automatic shell resupply in several places to supply exactly
1370 the shells actually fired, no more, no less.
1371 * Change depth charges back to how they are documented and worked
1372 before 4.0.6, mostly: require no guns, one military, do damage like
1373 shell fire from three guns (before 4.0.6: two guns), use two
1374 shells. In 4.0.6's model, they worked exactly like shell fire
1375 (require guns and gun crew, non-zero firing range, damage and
1376 ammunition use scales with available guns), except for missions,
1377 which was a bug. Note that depth charge damage for all ships is
1378 now like fire from three guns for two shells. No change for dd; af
1379 did two gun damage for one shell before, and nas did four gun
1380 damage for two shells.
1381 * The edit command keys deprecated in 4.3.3 are now gone.
1382 * Fix build not to screw up automatic dependencies on certain compile
1384 * Fix a bug that could prevent repeated news from properly
1385 aggregating into one news item.
1386 * Properly initialize all bits in game state files, even those that
1388 * Fix explore's test for stopping on a splashed bridge. The bug made
1389 explore print to a bogus message.
1390 * Fix spelling of symbol airburst in table plane-flags. This could
1392 * Change designate not to check total cost before executing the
1393 redesignation. The code implementing that was buggy and too ugly
1394 to live. Designate doesn't cost anything in the stock game.
1395 * Always charge land units at least as much mobility for assaulting
1396 from non-landing ships as from landing ships. Before, marines lost
1397 all mobility when assaulting from a non-landing ship, which could
1398 be less than what the same assault costs from a landing ship (half
1400 * Fix LWP's stack initialization for -s. It caused crashes on some
1402 * Fix confused and buggy bridge splashing code:
1403 - Flying planes could be reported drowned.
1404 - Pin-bombing a bridge head failed to collapse bridge spans for
1405 lack of support, unless the pin-bombing caused collateral damage.
1406 - Corrupt sector file could lead to infinite recursion.
1407 * Relative names now work for econfig keys data and info.
1408 * Fix utility programs to abort on internal errors. They used to
1409 print a message and attempt to recover.
1410 * Fix off-by-one in fairland that ate the last expansion island.
1411 * Switch from CVS to git.
1412 * Code refactoring and cleanup.
1413 * Portability fixes.
1414 * Info file, manual page and documentation fixes and updates.
1416 Changes to Empire 4.3.11 - Tue Jan 1 18:57:38 UTC 2008
1417 * New sector selector elev. It's set by fairland, but has no effect
1418 on the game. It can be useful for deities to customize a world
1419 created by fairland.
1420 * The client now copes with ids greater than 15. The Empire
1421 protocol currently uses 14 ids.
1422 * Rewrite the client's code for reading server output during login.
1423 The old code could write one byte beyond the end of the buffer
1424 (theoretically a remote hole), got confused by long lines, and
1425 lines that didn't arrive in one piece.
1426 * Long country name, password or user name crashed the client.
1427 * Fix xdump not to deny access to game state tables when maximum
1428 minutes per day are exceeded.
1429 * The server considers a country bankrupt when its treasury is
1430 negative. Except when it doesn't. Fix that:
1431 - report misreported countries with $0 as broke.
1432 - If a command spent a few cents more than you had, commands requiring
1433 money became unavailable even when rounding brought you back to
1434 $0. But logging out and back in then bankrupted you.
1435 - If your treasury rose to exactly $0, commands requiring money
1436 remained unavailable.
1437 - If you had $0, sectors didn't build and sectors and ships didn't
1438 produce at the update.
1439 * Fix a bug in trade that made your money evaporate when a trade fell
1440 through because you couldn't fully pay. This bug was there since
1441 the introduction of the market in 4.0.0. It got aggravated by the
1442 removal of forced loans in 4.3.0.
1443 * Fix printing of the new group in army, fleet and wing. Broken in
1445 * Fix flash not to screw up the message when the first argument
1446 contains white-space.
1447 * Don't let planes intercept when they are stuck in foreign bases, on
1448 inefficient ships or land units, or on land units loaded on ships
1450 * Fix a bug that made interception require petrol to be present even
1451 for planes that don't use fuel (SAMs). Broken in 4.3.3. Air
1452 defense missions weren't affected.
1453 * fairland and setsector now limit fertility to 100 instead of 120,
1454 like the other resources.
1455 * Generalize the autonav hack for fishing boats so it covers oil
1457 * Fix bug in path command that made it swallow every other step.
1459 * The execute command no longer supports redirections and execute in
1460 batch files. Flaws in the Empire protocol make it next to
1461 impossible for clients to implement that correctly. See
1462 doc/clients-howto for an explanation.
1463 * Rewrite much of the client's code for sending commands and
1464 receiving server output:
1465 - No longer blocks on sending commands, which could deadlock the
1467 - Fix race condition that could cause server output to be discarded
1468 on EOF on standard input.
1469 - Don't discard server output when reading standard input fails.
1470 - Fix error handling for execute and other, more obscure cases.
1471 - More rigorous error checking for redirections and execute.
1472 Clearer error messages, too.
1473 - Fix execute redirected to file or pipe. Believed to be broken in
1475 - The client now creates files for redirections with the same
1476 permissions whether the redirection is in a pipe or not. Before,
1477 redirections without a pipe created files with no permissions for
1478 group and others. This change may make your redirected output
1479 visible to other users on your system. Use the usual controls,
1480 like umask, to restrict permissions to your liking.
1481 - Reject unexpected redirections (violating the protocol). Before,
1482 they silently replaced the current one, and in the case of pipes
1483 leaked file descriptors and memory.
1484 - Redirections in batch files are not implemented. They didn't
1485 quite work before, and could leak memory and file descriptors. A
1486 flaw in the Empire protocol makes them next to impossible to
1487 implement correctly.
1488 - The execute command in batch files is not implemented. A flaw in
1489 the Empire protocol makes this practically useless anyway.
1490 - Old code leaked memory in various places.
1491 - Unfortunate incompatibility with older servers: if you type the
1492 EOF character (normally ^D) at an argument prompt, the session
1493 hangs. Use the interrupt character (normally ^C) to get out.
1494 * The client now supports options -h and -v.
1495 * The client no longer zaps its command line in a lame attempt at
1496 protecting users who foolishly specify passwords on the command
1497 line. Zapping annoys system administrators and creates a false
1499 * Journal entries are now flushed to disk right away when the server
1500 is running in debug mode.
1501 * Fix bugs in load that could make loading operations fail noisily
1502 instead of silently on some systems.
1503 * Server now reliably shuts down session when it receives an
1504 end-of-file condition from the client. Before, it merely failed
1505 the current command when it got it at an argument prompt.
1506 * Fix bug in execute that could crash the server on some systems when
1507 it prompts for the argument.
1508 * Fix bug that let you check whether a non-allied carrier is
1509 efficient enough for takeoff when one of your planes got stuck
1511 * Fix bug that let you attempt to escort a one-way mission to a
1512 carrier with non-light, non-interceptor escorts. Such planes don't
1513 fit on carriers, and the command then failed with a bogus error
1514 message. Before 4.2.17, the planes flew, and the escorts were
1516 * Change the rules for fitting planes on ships slightly, so that the
1517 order of loading no longer matters. Choppers and x-lights can now
1518 use plane slots even when not light. X-light choppers, which don't
1519 exist in the stock game, can no longer use x-light slots.
1520 * The server now keeps its log file open, just like the journal.
1521 * New server option -R to set the PRNG seed. This is for
1522 reproducible tests. Change the Windows-only service uninstall
1523 options from -r/-R to -u/-U.
1524 * Supply a real PRNG for Windows instead of the leaky water-pistol
1526 * Threads sleeping until a specified time could return early under
1527 Windows. This could cause missed updates. Broken in 4.3.10.
1528 * Fix missing newline in show updates.
1529 * Power report didn't factor tech into power correctly. Broken in
1531 * Code refactoring and cleanup.
1532 * Info file and documentation fixes and updates.
1534 Changes to Empire 4.3.10 - Thu Sep 6 17:59:53 UTC 2007
1535 * Bridge spans now cost $1000 instead of $2000, and bridge towers
1536 $3000 instead of $7500.
1537 * The Windows port now supports IPv6, but it still needs to be
1538 enabled manually at compile-time.
1539 * The custom table reader detects more errors.
1540 * Do not leak world creation time in files and fairland, because
1541 that facilitates attacks against the PRNG. This misfeature crept
1543 * Remove the ancient, crufty non-UCONTEXT system-dependent LWP code.
1544 Using it required manual hackery since 4.3.0.
1545 * Plug file descriptor leak in add command.
1546 * Don't kill player connections violently when their thread appears
1547 to be hung. Threads being aborted by update or shutdown could be
1548 misidentified as hung, and the violence could lead to resource
1549 leaks, locked out updates, and corrupted game state.
1550 * Fix LWP to reliably wake up threads sleeping for a time. Before,
1551 players with a sufficiently fast connection could starve out system
1552 threads, including the update.
1553 * Fix a class of bugs that made commands behave differently while the
1554 update is attempting to take control:
1555 - No MOB_ACCESS mobility was gained.
1556 - Telegrams were miscounted.
1557 - Bulletins got misfiled as production reports.
1558 - The navigate command ignored sail paths.
1559 - The declare command was more quiet, and declarations of war
1560 failed silently when SLOW_WAR was enabled.
1561 - Many messages got misdirected to bulletins.
1562 Some of these bugs go back all the way to Empire 2, ca 1995.
1563 * New deity command reload, effect similar to SIGHUP.
1564 * Not voting for a demand update no longer lets you veto further
1565 demand updates. This feature was flawed (it encourages players to
1566 vote late so that they can tactically vote no and thus build up
1567 veto rights), virtually unused, and buggy. The edit command still
1568 accepts and ignores the country key 'U' for compatibility, but it
1570 * Fix zdone not to claim to have triggered an update when they're
1572 * New update scheduler and ETU clock:
1573 - New schedule file. See doc/schedule for how to use it. Replaces
1574 econfig keys update_policy, adj_update, update_times, hourslop,
1575 blitz_time. A change of schedule does not require a server
1577 - The force command can no longer force updates in the future.
1578 Edit the schedule file for that.
1579 - New command show updates to show the update schedule. Obsoletes
1581 - New xdump game and xdump updates.
1582 - New utility program empsched to help test update schedules.
1583 - Replace option DEMANDUPDATE and econfig key update_demandpolicy
1584 by econfig key update_demand.
1585 - econfig key update_demandtimes no longer applies to scheduled
1587 - You now receive new BTUs at the update in addition to login.
1588 - You now always gain the same BTUs and MOB_ACCESS mobility per
1589 turn, even when the update schedule changes, updates get missed,
1590 or unscheduled demand updates run.
1591 - Remove the mobupdate command, because porting it to the new ETU
1592 clock is not worth it.
1593 * Redesign of synchronization between commands, update and shutdown,
1594 and how updates are triggered:
1595 - Simplify update to a single thread waiting for the trigger.
1596 Before, three update threads had to perform a carefully
1597 choreographed dance to make updates happen. The dance relied on
1598 thread priorities for correctness, which are only implemented by
1599 LWP. With pthreads and under Windows, demand updates were prone
1600 to two update threads starting up concurrently. Even with LWP,
1601 forced and demand updates could lead to double updates.
1602 - Use a lock for synchronization: commands take it shared, update
1603 and shutdown take it exclusive. This makes update and shutdown
1604 block until all aborted commands terminated and gave up their
1605 lock. Before, they proceeded blindly after waiting two or one
1606 seconds respectively, which was cheesy and unsafe.
1607 - New commands no longer fail while the update is pending, they are
1608 delayed until after the update.
1609 - New commands can no longer start during shutdown. Before, they
1610 could, but risked getting killed violently, possibly corrupting
1612 - Fix command execution so that commands blocked in writing
1613 redirections are abortable. The bug allowed players to delay
1614 update and shutdown indefinitely.
1615 - Fix shutdown not to let player threads block on output. This
1616 let players delay shutdown indefinitely.
1617 - Fix reading of player input not to block again after update or
1618 shutdown aborted it. The bug allowed players to delay update and
1619 shutdown indefinitely.
1620 * Thread priorities are only implemented by LWP and no longer used.
1621 With LWP, they let players with a sufficiently fast connection
1622 starve out the threads that clean the lost file and kill idle
1623 connections. Drop them.
1624 * Show nuke rounded required research incorrectly.
1625 * Log unprintable characters as octal escapes rather than question
1626 marks in the journal file.
1627 * The files program no longer changes permissions of existing files.
1628 * The files program now creates all files with permissions ug=rw and
1629 all directories ug=rwx, modified by umask.
1630 * Fix a bug that could make arm, disarm and nuke detonation work with
1631 a used-up nuke instead of the armed one. This could be abused to
1632 detonate nukes multiple times. Broken in 4.3.3.
1633 * Fix nuke detonation output for zero blast radius.
1634 * Plug memory leaks in thread code.
1635 * Fix a bug that made LWP I/O wakeup unreliable.
1636 * New march sub-command v for view.
1637 * Journal was initialized before threads were, which was wrong.
1638 * Fix server not to create a journal on SIGHUP when it is disabled.
1639 * shutdown 0 now requests immediate shutdown instead of cancellation
1640 of a pending shutdown. shutdown -1 now cancels.
1641 * flash and wall no longer split long message lines.
1642 * Fix a bug in collect that screwed up a fully collected loan instead
1643 of deleting it. The screwed up loan could not be sharked or
1644 collected, but it could be repaid.
1645 * Remove the wait command, it's been broken and restricted to deity
1646 since Empire 2, ca. 1995.
1647 * Budget failed to take sector production into account for predicting
1648 unit repairs. Before 4.3.6, this bug bit only when you fooled
1649 around with budget priorities.
1650 * When unit repairs are limited by materials, the efficiency gain is
1652 * Ship repairs outside harbors and plane repairs by carriers used to
1653 consume commodities when and as far as available. Now, they
1654 consume the same fraction of the real cost of each commodity,
1655 i.e. commodity use is limited by the most scarce commodity.
1656 Neither old nor new behavior make much sense, but the new code is
1658 * Code refactoring and cleanup, in particular to make the Windows
1660 * Portability fixes.
1661 * Info file and manual page updates. All manual pages are now
1662 installed in section 6.
1664 Changes to Empire 4.3.9 - Sat Jan 6 12:42:19 UTC 2007
1665 * Fix declare to prevent the deity from changing relations for a
1666 player to self. Allow the deity to set the relations of a player
1668 * Fix arm not to put the same nuke on multiple planes (broken in
1670 * New option AUTO_POWER.
1671 * Sectors now repair allied land units.
1672 * Sectors now repair only own and allied planes.
1673 * Fix repair of planes on foreign carriers: repair allied planes,
1674 ignore the others. Before 4.3.3, carriers destroyed rather than
1675 repaired foreign planes. Since 4.3.3, foreign planes were treated
1676 as recoverable error.
1677 * Fix automatic fortification of land units to use all excess
1678 mobility even when mobility delta exceeds mobility maximum.
1679 * Disable automatic fortification of land units when MOB_ACCESS is
1680 on, because it is prohibitively slow then (broken in 4.2.13).
1681 * Budget now shows level production (tech, education, research and
1682 happiness) rounded instead of randomly rounded.
1683 * Fix update not to randomly flush small level production to zero.
1684 * Fix overly restrictive game file locking under Windows (broken in
1686 * Fix navigate to charge mobility for sweeping mines without moving
1690 Changes to Empire 4.3.8 - Fri Oct 20 18:30:28 UTC 2006
1691 * Ships no longer produce stuff when the government is broke.
1692 * Fix land unit casualties in revolts.
1693 * Fix security units not to raid friendly che.
1694 * Fix update sequence to ensure stopped sectors don't work on the
1695 ships, planes and land units in the sector. Before 4.3.6, this bug
1696 bit only when you fooled around with budget priorities.
1697 * Fix canal loading (was broken in 4.3.0).
1698 * Fix tend not to tend land units that could not be loaded.
1699 * Make xdump command available before break, but deny access to game
1701 * Lock game files to prevent concurrent access by multiple programs.
1702 fairland does not yet obey the lock.
1703 * Fix production to consider sector item limit.
1704 * Fix swapsector to update coastal flag correctly (broken in 4.3.0).
1705 * Enhanced mapping sub-commands in move, test, explore and transport.
1709 Changes to Empire 4.3.7 - Fri Jul 14 23:05:19 UTC 2006
1710 * Sanctuaries are again fully populated with civilians (4.3.6 changed
1711 the limit, but not the population). Food is now spread evenly
1713 * Fix path finder to find shortest naval and aerial paths again
1715 * transport's map sub-command now does the right thing for a unit
1717 * Fix bug in map sub-command of move, explore and transport that
1718 passed junk to map command. Could theoretically crash.
1719 * Food need reported by starvation was one short for sectors without
1721 * Change land unit ammunition use back to what it was before 4.2.3.
1722 This lets deities customize ammunition use independent of damage.
1723 It also substantially reduces ammunition consumption at high tech.
1724 * navigation and march enhancements:
1725 - Sub-command 'f' now takes an optional ship / land unit number.
1726 - Mapping sub-commands now take an optional ship / land unit
1728 - New sub-command 'd' to drop mines.
1729 * Let minesweepers retreat at their full speed (missed in 4.3.6).
1730 * SUPER_BARS cannot be harmed, so don't interdict them.
1731 * Don't let trains and non-trains march together for now, because the
1732 march code isn't prepared for that.
1733 * New mapping flag 'n' to show nukes.
1734 * Mapping flag '*' now shows nukes as well.
1735 * New command nbmap to bmap around a nuke. Overload command nmap to
1736 map around a nuke when given a nuke argument.
1737 * Fix an inconsistency that gave tactical bombers a small bonus
1738 vs. flak when pin-bombing.
1739 * Fix production to show the designation that actually produces, not
1740 the designation as it is now (broken in 4.3.6).
1741 * Fix accidental whitespace change in output of sdump, pdump and
1742 ldump that crept into 4.3.5.
1743 * Support user-defined sector types and products in custom tables,
1744 not just customization of existing ones.
1745 * Fix off-by-one bug in budget that used to be masked by budget
1746 priorities until their demise in 4.3.6. The bug could crash the
1747 game on certain systems.
1751 Changes to Empire 4.3.6 - Tue Jun 20 18:46:18 UTC 2006
1752 * The shutdown command now terminates the server process correctly
1753 even with LinuxThreads pthreads under Linux 2.4 and earlier.
1754 * Cope with old versions of groff (broken in 4.3.0).
1755 * You can now arm allied planes with nukes.
1756 * Taking a nuke off a plane gives it to the sector owner again.
1757 Feature was accidentally dropped in 4.3.3. Recipient must be
1759 * Naval path went bananas for impassable end sectors (broken in
1761 * New econfig key disabled_commands.
1762 * New territory selector dterr, restricted to deities. The territory
1763 command defaults to it for deities.
1764 * Let land units attack as long as they have positive mobility,
1765 except for high-mobility terrain (mountains), where the rules
1766 remain as they were: land units need to have all the mobility
1767 charged for the attack, not counting combat and moving in to
1768 occupy. Rationale: Making sure your land units reach attack
1769 positions with enough mobility left is a pain in the neck.
1770 Requiring only positive mobility is friendlier, but allowed rushing
1771 of mountains, so we make an exception there.
1772 * Can typeset info pages as PostScript. Result isn't exactly pretty.
1773 * Support disabling of infrastructure in infra custom table. Remove
1774 redundant option DEFENSE_INFRA. show command now shows only enabled
1776 * Fix crash on empty argument in bmap, lbmap, lmap, map, nmap, pbmap,
1777 pmap sbmap, smap (broken in 4.3.1).
1778 * New, simpler sector mobility cost formula:
1779 - The basic cost is still a linear function of sector efficiency,
1780 with customizable cost at 0% and at 100%. The latter used to be
1781 derived from the former. The show command shows both parameters
1783 - Mountains are no longer a special case.
1784 - Tweak costs: mountains now range from 2.4 to 1.2 instead of 2.174
1785 to 1.304, highway, bridge head, bridge span and bridge tower
1786 range from 0.4 to 0.001 instead of 0.2 to 0.001, and wilderness
1787 is 0.4 flat instead of 0.6 to 0.4. All sector types mortal
1788 players can designate now cost the same at 0%. That's a feature.
1789 - Road infrastructure now reduces cost up to 90%, linear in road
1790 efficiency (used to be close to that, but non-linear). Same for
1791 rail infrastructure, but 99%. Adapted from Ice World V.
1792 - Double land unit minimum cost to 0.02, to slow them down on
1794 - Change land unit cost penalty in newly taken land to an extra 0.2
1795 instead of a minimum of 0.2, to reduce penetration depth.
1796 * Reduce bridge head defense and collect value to match highway's.
1797 * sinfrastructure displayed bogus rail mobility costs when there was
1799 * Retreating engineers took full landmine damage instead of half.
1800 * Fix socket creation code not to print a null pointer.
1801 * Fix login option code not to search beyond end of table (broken in
1803 * Spy planes and satellites can no longer spot landspies.
1804 * Spy planes can now spot surface ships at sea. They can no longer
1805 spot land units loaded on ships or land units.
1806 * Fix train retreat mobility cost, and don't permit retreat off rail.
1807 * Change maximum population to 100 for plains (was 49), mountains
1808 (was 99), bridge spans and bridge towers (was 999), and to 1000 for
1809 the other habitable sector types (was 999).
1810 * Let minesweepers navigate at the speed their stats indicate by
1811 letting them sweep on the move at no extra mobility charge.
1812 * Reduce chance for planes to abort from 100-eff (if eff<80) to
1813 80-eff. This should make it easier to punch through air defense,
1814 flak in particular, and increase the risk of getting shot down.
1815 * Ship and land unit flak intensity is now proportional to efficiency.
1816 * Ship and land unit flak intensity is no longer scaled by the tech
1817 of the owner of the last thing firing. It's still scaled by each
1819 * All ships and land units firing flak now spot the plane and are
1820 spotted by the plane. Previously, spotting stopped as soon as flak
1822 * Inefficient land units were overcharged mobility when reacting.
1823 Broken when Empire3 changed land unit mobility use not to depend on
1824 efficiency, except for supply units.
1825 * New journal file to log complete player input plus selected
1826 important events. Controlled by new econfig key keep_journal, off
1828 * Fix unsafe shutdown on SIGINT and SIGTERM.
1829 * Fix land unit path finding: paths weren't always cheapest (broken
1830 in 4.0.2), and trains could be sent down paths without rail (never
1831 worked). Also fixes unit reaction path cost.
1832 * The custom table reader can now deal with sector, item, product and
1833 infra tables more comfortably.
1834 * Remove option BIG_CITY. Deities can customize the sect table to
1835 get the same effect.
1836 * Many more selectors can now be compared with names, not just
1837 numbers. This includes nations, e.g. census ?old=Mirkwood. Does
1838 not fully work for queer names like &&&.
1839 * Let land units on missions support, just like ships.
1840 * Don't let units loaded on a train react.
1841 * Change update sequence to repair ships, planes and land units after
1842 sectors produce. This makes repairs use new avail instead of old.
1843 * Let players stop and start units.
1844 * Remove budget priorities.
1845 * Make plane report easier to understand.
1846 * Change land report to show carriers in the same format as plane and
1849 * Info file and manual page fixes.
1851 Changes to Empire 4.3.5 - Sun May 28 07:49:54 UTC 2006
1852 * In conditionals, ~ compared to a string selector now stands for an
1854 * Change encoding of `not in any group' from " " to "". This makes
1855 fleet=~ work. It also affects xdump.
1856 * Fix plane capture code to clear wing.
1857 * People now eat and starve exactly the same in sectors, ships and
1858 land units. There used to be small differences, and civilians and
1859 uw loaded on land units didn't eat at all. The starvation command
1860 has been updated accordingly.
1861 * Fix bug that makes it impossible to assault or board with land
1862 units (broken in 4.3.4).
1865 Changes to Empire 4.3.4 - Thu May 25 05:46:10 UTC 2006
1866 * Don't use non-portable groff features (broken in 4.3.0).
1867 * Work around potential crash bugs in command argument access.
1868 * Plug major information leak through nation selectors (broken in
1869 4.2.21). The fix unfortunately exchanges the meaning of xdump
1870 nation and xdump country. Sorry about that.
1871 * Minimize redundancy between (mortal's) xdump nation and xdump
1873 * New nation selector rejects.
1874 * xdump nation now shows foreign relations and no longer discloses
1876 * Fix crash bug in edit.
1877 * Fix number of planes building in budget command (broken in 4.3.3).
1878 * Selectors group, fleet, wing and army are now strings, and obvious
1879 syntax like fleet#a works. xdump also shows the strings now.
1880 Units not assigned to a group currently have group string " ", but
1881 that may still change.
1882 * Don't fold conditionals to lower case, because it breaks valid
1883 conditionals like fleet#A.
1884 * Mobility cost of a plane sortie is no longer limited to current
1886 * Various formulas no longer truncate or round intermediate results.
1887 * Interdiction mission charged twice the normal mobility cost for
1889 * Fix sail not to interpret negative x-coordinates as unsail
1891 * Improved configure script.
1894 Changes to Empire 4.3.3 - Tue May 16 21:35:47 UTC 2006
1895 * power c can now show powerless countries. power c * works.
1896 * Fortresses now require 5% efficiency to return fire and interdict.
1897 * Range of ship return fire and support fire no longer depends on
1899 * Fix heap smash in login command client. Remote hole!
1900 * Properly destroy nukes on collapsing bridges. Before, you could
1901 rescue them by building a new bridge or arming them on naval
1903 * Nukes are now numbered like other units:
1904 - New selector type replaces selectors number and types.
1905 - New selector plane points to plane armed with this nuke.
1906 - New selectors effic, mobil, tech, group, opx, opy, mission,
1907 radius. Provided because all units have them; values are
1908 currently not interesting.
1909 - nuke command output redesigned.
1910 - ndump output changed subtly: nukes are no longer sorted by
1911 location, nukes in the same location no longer share id, and
1912 nukes on planes are shown.
1913 - transport nuke now works like transport plane.
1914 * arm and disarm now accept the common plane syntax, not just plane
1916 * Fix arm to let you change an armed plane's air-burst/ground-burst
1918 * territory no longer re-prompts when supplied with a bad argument,
1920 * edit lets you edit stuff that is actually computed from other
1921 state, like sector's coastal flag. This makes no sense and is now
1922 deprecated. Stuff deprecated since 4.2.15 is now gone.
1925 Changes to Empire 4.3.2 - Thu Apr 27 17:59:58 UTC 2006
1926 * Fix security units' raid at the update (broken in 4.0.0, fixed only
1927 for 100% units in 4.2.7). Back out 4.2.7's 2.5x deadliness
1928 increase. Make sure empty units don't kill anyone.
1929 * Fix bug in player_init(), which was most likely fatal on 64 bit
1930 hosts. Broken in 4.3.0.
1931 * Fix xdump not to disclose other countries' realms (new in 4.3.0).
1932 * The order in which sectors were visited for `*' arguments disclosed
1933 the real origin, fix. Mapping commands used to work around this
1934 bug, until 4.3.1 exposed it there as well.
1935 * Code didn't compile on some systems.
1936 * Fix edit plane not to truncate large values for keys 'a' and 'd'.
1938 Changes to Empire 4.3.1 - Sat Apr 15 11:40:47 UTC 2006
1939 * Fix check of game state on server startup (new in 4.3.0).
1940 * sail now accepts a destination sector.
1941 * Tend could send bogus bulletins (broken in 4.3.0).
1942 * Plug memory leaks in mission command.
1943 * Close loophole in navigate that allowed players to find all sectors
1944 that are unfriendly or inefficient harbors or bridges.
1945 * Server didn't start when default econfig was missing and user
1946 didn't supply one with -e (broken in 4.3.0).
1947 * Retreat condition 'h' (helpless) never worked, fix.
1948 * Fix retreating mine sweepers to use mobility for sweeping.
1949 * Fix retreating land units to hit mines with the same probability
1950 and to take the same damage as in normal movement. Before,
1951 hit probability was higher, and damage was lower.
1952 * Ships could retreat into sectors owned by whoever made them
1953 retreat, but not in their owner's sectors.
1954 * Fix 'm' at the movement prompt of transport and test.
1955 * Fix march and test not to apply conditionals to sectors mapped,
1956 which led to spurious error messages.
1957 * Fix break not to respect conditionals. The bug let players keep
1959 * Fix retreat code not to respect conditionals. Attackers could
1960 abuse this to suppress fleet and army retreat orders.
1961 * Fix retreat and edit to zero-terminate retreat paths.
1962 Theoretically abusable for gaining information.
1963 * Fix format string crash bugs in load, spy and bomb.
1964 * Fix the telegram editor: empty telegrams were broken in 4.2.21, and
1965 ~p before the first line of text never worked.
1966 * Fix ancient bridge building race condition that could break the
1967 test whether the player can afford the bridge.
1968 * Fix trade lot change detection in set command. Can probably be
1969 abused to defraud sellers.
1970 * The pthread code now compiles under Solaris.
1971 * navigate and march now permit any whitespace between route and
1972 optional argument for radar, lookout, sonar, not just spaces.
1973 * Fix canal navigation (was broken in 4.3.0).
1976 Changes to Empire 4.3.0 - Sun Mar 19 08:13:10 UTC 2006
1977 * version no longer pretends option SHIPNAMES still exists.
1978 * Remove files auth and ban. They could be used to restrict client
1979 address and user. Restricting user is useless, because players can
1980 send whatever they want. Banning IPs is better done with a packet
1981 filter. That leaves restricting deity IPs. Provide new econfig
1982 key privip for that. Apply it to session kill as well as login.
1983 * xdump escapes GUINEA_PIGS status:
1984 - xdump is now enabled unconditionally.
1985 - xdump sect now dumps selector coastal, because it can't be
1986 reliably computed from other xdump information.
1987 - New xdump realm and country. Realm information is now stored in
1988 a separate file, with appropriate selectors.
1989 - Reviewed for completeness and information leaks. See info xdump
1990 for remaining issues. New treaty selector uid, nat selectors
1991 relations, contacts. Removed useless selectors: news and lost
1993 - Command syntax changed.
1994 - xdump opt is no more, option information is now in xdump ver.
1995 - xdump can now dump meta-data.
1996 - Header and footer changed to be more compact. You now need
1997 meta-data to identify fields.
1999 - Documentation in doc/xdump.
2000 * New econfig key builtindir.
2001 * New econfig key custom_tables lets you customize configuration
2002 tables without recompiling. Customizing tables other than unit
2003 tables is not recommended for now. See doc/econfig for
2005 * Check configuration and game state are sane on server startup.
2006 * Remove option NONUKES and NEUTRON. Deities can load a suitable
2007 nuke table to get the same effect.
2008 * Remove option DRNUKE. Use econfig key drnuke_const to control
2009 whether nukes need research.
2010 * Disqualify land units from performing missions while loaded on
2012 * Fix dump for strings without terminating zero.
2013 * Fix login command option not to send an extra prompt.
2014 * zdone now displays information about demand update vetoing.
2015 * The Windows port now requires Winsock version 2.
2016 * Remove econfig key powe_cost.
2017 * version report now shows all the configurable settings of interest
2019 * carg and lcarg now display people as well.
2020 * ldump now dumps civ and uw as well.
2021 * Fix dangling pointer dereference in dogfighting code.
2022 * Tell sector owner when partisans take over. But don't disclose che
2024 * emp_server, files, fairland now support options -h and -v.
2025 * Simplify baroque version numbering to a single version number.
2026 This affects output of version.
2027 * New show item and show news.
2028 * New build process:
2029 - Follow the usual steps: configure; make; make install. The
2030 latter is optional. The only file deities still have to edit is
2032 - Use GNU Autoconf for system configuration.
2033 - Use GNU Make for portability and features.
2034 - Support separate build trees.
2035 - Remake out-of-date dependencies automatically.
2036 - Remake out-of-date info files automatically.
2037 - Flatten info directory.
2038 - Formatted info files are no longer distributed in source tarball.
2039 - Use LWP only with UCONTEXT. Autoconfiguring the other LWP
2040 low-level options doesn't seem to be worth the effort, as
2041 UCONTEXT should be pretty portable.
2042 * Fix use of freed memory in sail.
2043 * sail could let large ships enter big cities.
2044 * Fix reject and accept not to require contact.
2045 * Fix sharebmap and telegram to prompt for a missing first argument.
2046 * Fix report to align column research correctly for deities.
2047 * When the optional newspaper argument doesn't work because HIDDEN is
2048 enabled, complain instead of ignoring it silently.
2049 * When BLITZ is enabled, fairland no longer permutes country numbers
2050 in newcap_script so that start islands are ordered from top left to
2052 * Minimize output format differences between options:
2053 - census shows column fall regardless of FALLOUT.
2054 - show nuke now shows column res regardless of DRNUKE.
2055 - report no longer suppress column status when HIDDEN is enabled.
2056 HIDDEN limits status information like for the country command.
2057 - relations column width differed depending on option SLOW_WAR.
2058 Always use the wider format.
2059 * Fix a bug in edit that suppressed the player notification telex on
2060 military reserve change.
2061 * Fix command dispatch not to let deities use commands that are
2062 declared not to be available to them. The only command affected is
2064 * Fix the list command for visitor.
2065 * econfig key m_m_p_d no longer applies to deities.
2066 * Fix the origin command for country #0. Allow moving origin to
2067 another country's origin. Allow deities to reset origin to
2068 absolute 0,0. This turns origin into a superset of the offset
2069 command. Remove offset command.
2070 * Fix a bug that caused unpredictable flak damage when it should have
2071 been maximum damage (was broken in 4.2.19).
2072 * Don't store initial capital location, remove the associated nat
2073 selectors xstart, ystart.
2074 * Fix production command to consider resource depletion.
2075 * Fix justification of coordinate output in cutoff and mission.
2076 * Option UPDATESCHED is no longer optional. Disabling it didn't
2079 * Turn options into ordinary econfig keys.
2080 * New econfig key start_cash.
2081 * BTU regeneration now depends on the capital's work percentage.
2082 * nation now supports an optional argument that lets deities ask for
2083 somebody else's nation report.
2084 * Fix nation to display SANCTUARY instead of VISITOR for countries in
2086 * Fix capital to let you use a regained sacked capital without
2087 activating another one in between.
2088 * Don't move capital when it is sacked.
2089 * New ship capability canal, replacing obscure formula based on build
2091 * You now need a capital to request a demand update.
2092 * power now ignores landspies.
2093 * Fix LWP stack checking.
2094 * Clean up LWP, drop dead machine-specific code, fix portability bugs
2096 * census now shows the old owner instead of `*'. dump is unchanged
2097 to avoid breaking clients.
2098 * peek no longer prints the old owner.
2099 * When a bombed land unit retreated, collateral damage was applied to
2101 * paradrop, drop and fly can no longer abandon the base sector.
2102 * Tending foreign ships now sends a bulletin to the owner.
2103 * Fix bug that permitted login for inactive countries, including ""
2104 * Fix tend for spies.
2105 * Change launch to fire all missiles selected at the same target.
2106 Previously, it prompted for a new target after each missile.
2107 * add, consider, build, launch and fire no longer re-prompt when
2108 supplied with a bad argument, they just fail. Consequently, the
2109 build command no longer lets you list types you can build. It
2110 points to the show command instead.
2111 * Fix add not to truncate country number.
2112 * Fix selector coastal to be accurate at all times.
2113 * Fix obscure bug in fairland: the sector added last to an island
2114 wasn't considered coastal. Affected resource computation.
2115 * Fix sector wiping in add command.
2116 * Remove options NO_LCMS, NO_HCMS, NO_OIL. They were broken in many
2117 ways. Custom configuration tables should become a serviceable
2118 replacement eventually.
2119 * Client no longer freezes on long lines of server output.
2120 * Fix uninitialized signal mask bugs.
2121 * Fix Windows service code's treatment of -e.
2122 * Sub interdiction disclosed sub owner through news' actor selector.
2123 * country reports on all countries, but carefully limits information
2124 disclosed to mortals. Output format changed.
2125 * Market no longer forces sellers to grant loans.
2126 * Fix potential crash bug in set command. Friendlier prompt and
2128 * Substantial code cleanup and portability fixes.
2129 * Extend empfile abstraction to cover game configuration.
2130 * Overhaul of game state storage.
2131 * The above includes major contributions from Ron Koenderink. Many
2134 Changes to Empire 4.2.23 - Sun Oct 23 09:28:26 UTC 2005
2135 * Make version pretend option SHIPNAMES still exists, for the benefit
2136 of clients that still depend on it.
2137 * The change to conv in 4.2.22 could crash or compute incorrect
2139 * Info updates missing in 4.2.22.
2140 * A few code cleanups.
2142 Changes to Empire 4.2.22 - Tue Oct 11 20:23:51 UTC 2005
2143 * Log player login, logout and session kill.
2144 * Close loophole in assembly point rules that allowed players to find
2145 all unowned sectors. The assembly point must now be owned by you
2146 or an ally, or you or an ally must have a ship there.
2147 * Don't let embarked land units fire flak.
2148 * Fix display of the last connection's host when the host name was
2150 * Fix change command to accept full length representative (password),
2151 currently 19 characters. It used to chop off after eight
2153 * Non-recon missions no longer establish contact to owners of
2154 overflown sectors, because those missions do not identify the
2155 owner. This matches info Hidden.
2156 * The following events now establish contact:
2158 - Sighting a ship when toggle coastwatch is off
2159 - Spotting overflying planes
2160 - satellite spotting land units
2161 - lookout and llookout spotting ships, planes and land units
2162 - Any relations change
2163 * The country command's `temporary' state of disorder ended after
2165 * Telegram notifications could get lost in exotic circumstances,
2166 e.g. while a second client attempted to connect. Can be abused for
2168 * Remove option SNEAK_ATTACK.
2169 * Fix lboard not to let you board dead land units.
2170 * Fix stack smash in bomb, drop, fly, paradrop, recon and sail.
2172 * bomb, drop, fly, paradrop, recon and sail now deal with EOF
2174 * Fix fly to let the player abort the command at the last prompt.
2175 * Client no longer reads execute scripts in binary mode under
2177 * New econfig key listen_address.
2178 * econfig key port can now be a service name. Service empire no
2179 longer takes precedence over econfig.
2180 * Client falls back to compiled-in host only if environment doesn't
2181 supply one, not if it can't be resolved. Same for port.
2182 * Oil derrick could extract slightly more oil than was in the ground.
2183 * test command checked start sector for space and some other things
2184 instead of end sector.
2185 * convert now silently limits conversions to avoid exceeding maximum
2187 * shoot no longer limits you to 999 victims.
2188 * 4.2.19 broke pin-bombing commodities on some platforms.
2189 * Don't block on output while update is pending. This is required to
2190 ensure the update can abort commands.
2191 * Commands submitted while the update is waiting for commands to
2193 * The force command no longer waits for the specified time. It
2194 starts a scheduling thread instead, just like shutdown.
2195 * Correct grammar and punctuation in output of version.
2196 * Option SHIPNAMES is no longer optional.
2197 * Fix output of qorder and sorder for ships with sail path.
2198 * Don't change capital to agribusiness on retake. From Pat Loney.
2199 * bdes prompt for new designation was messed up for empty bmaps.
2200 * Client now supports pipes under Windows.
2201 * Care for subtle Windows socket incompatibilities.
2202 * Fix strength command not to lie about units reacting into
2204 * strength now yields the processor periodically, to keep the game
2206 * Schedule commands more fairly. Previously, a sufficiently fast
2207 player could starve out the others.
2208 * launch assumed plane maximum mobility 127 for calculating when
2209 satellites will be ready to use.
2210 * Drop support for for DCE threads.
2211 * Drop support for pthread implementations lacking pthread_kill().
2212 This includes ancient versions of OS X.
2214 * Minor info file fixes.
2215 * The above includes major contributions from Ron Koenderink. Many
2218 Changes to Empire 4.2.21 - Sat Jul 16 17:51:01 UTC 2005
2219 * Don't let threads block on output to another player thread's
2220 socket. Such blocking violates basic design assumptions and can
2221 cause all kinds of grief. In particular, it causes player session
2222 hangs under Windows with 4.2.20. Broken since the introduction of
2223 flash and asynchronous telegram notification many years ago.
2224 * Threads sleeping until a specified time could return early under
2225 Windows. This could cause double-updates.
2226 * Fix fallout damage (was broken in 4.2.19).
2227 * Fix show sector s (was broken in 4.2.19).
2228 * Fix deliver not to deliver friendly civilians into occupied
2230 * Fix mil duplication in board (was broken in 4.2.14).
2231 * Fix stack smash in lrange, shoot and execute. Remote holes, and
2232 the last one doesn't even require authentication.
2233 * Fix crash bug in emp_config parsing.
2234 * Fix buffer overruns in turn and shutdown.
2235 * Fix second argument of shutdown.
2236 * announce, pray, telegram and turn now abort on EOF.
2237 * Fix display of MOTD and game down message of maximum size.
2238 * Correctly support telnet line termination on input. Previously,
2239 carriage returns could slip into ship names and such.
2240 * Fix flash not to lie about recipients that are just logging in.
2241 * Remove obscure login command list.
2242 * Convert client from obsolete termcap to terminfo, and clean up
2244 * New fairland option -h to print usage information. Improved
2245 command line syntax diagnostics. Exit unsuccessfully on unknown
2247 * fleet and army now copy retreat orders of the fleet's or army's
2248 first member with group retreat orders in the same sector.
2249 Previously, they used the retreat orders of the first fleet or army
2250 member, which is less than useful, and failed to take ownership
2251 into account, which is an abusable bug.
2253 * Fix xdump not to disclose other countries' losses.
2254 * Fix exit status of files program when it can't create files.
2255 * Support UTF-8 encoded Unicode in human-human communications. This
2256 affects MOTD, game down message, telexes, announcements and flash
2257 messages. See new doc/unicode for technical details.
2258 * New login command `options' for client/server option negotiation.
2259 See new doc/clients-howto for technical details. The only option
2261 * emp_client -u now requests UTF-8. This requires a terminal that
2263 * Fix news for land unit defensive support.
2264 * Properly mark sea mines hit by retreating ships. Unmark mines
2266 * Fix diagnostics for unknown selector names in conditionals (was
2268 * Fix selector name clashes: rename ship selector mobquota to mquota,
2269 land selector for reaction range limit from rad to rmax.
2270 * Fix Windows services for relative file names on command line or in
2271 econfig (was broken in 4.2.20).
2272 * econfig keys ship_grow_scale, plane_grow_scale and land_grow_scale
2273 are now float. This gives deities finer control over maximum
2275 * Fix production command for sectors with 60% efficiency.
2276 * Improve syntax of read for deities.
2278 * Some info topic names differed only in case, which loses on
2279 case-insensitive file systems, and is a bad user interface even
2280 when it works. Change those names. Rename deity command hidden to
2281 peek because its info topic clashed with that of option HIDDEN.
2282 * Thanks to Doug Wescott sheep are finally covered properly in info.
2283 * Documentation fixes.
2284 * Much of the above was contributed by Ron Koenderink. Many thanks!
2286 Changes to Empire 4.2.20 - Tue Mar 22 21:07:18 UTC 2005
2287 * When units in different sectors marched, only units in the sector
2288 with the highest-numbered unit were interdicted. A marching
2289 non-spy made all marching spies visible to interdiction regardless
2291 * Fix crash when interdiction sinks second ship in a sector. Broken
2293 * Fix an ancient bug in simulation of level production that clobbered
2294 stack and could lead to low predictions, typically zero, which
2295 screwed up budget. The bug had no effect until 4.2.19.
2296 * When a sector revolts, and there wasn't enough space to liberate
2297 all uw, the number of remaining uw got the wrong sign. Broken in
2299 * Log and abort when LWP stack check detects stack smash. Server
2300 option -s no longer implies -p.
2301 * The native Windows build now supports -p and -s.
2302 * The native Windows build now properly deals with ^C when running in
2303 the foreground. It no longer prompts for a quit command on the
2305 * The meaning of server option -D in presence of -e is unclear.
2306 Other programs only support -e. Remove option -D. Use -e
2307 DIR/econfig instead of -D DIR.
2308 * New server option -v shows version information.
2309 * Fix the server's exit status with -h. Broken in 4.2.19.
2310 * The linux-pthreads build failed to shut down on signals.
2311 * Fix threading bugs in the native Windows build that made shutdown
2312 unsafe and screwed up update aborting commands.
2313 * New econfig key pre_update_hook to allow automatic, safe backup
2314 right before the update. See scripts/backup for an example.
2315 * The server now prints log messages to stderr as well when running
2317 * Fix potential buffer overflows in logerror() and lwpStatus().
2318 * Server now requires POSIX signals. It no longer catches SIGUSR1.
2319 * Remove support for ancient versions of HP-UX.
2320 * Fix seeding of PRNG broken in 4.2.19.
2321 * Don't reseed the PRNG in commands, it hurts randomness and could be
2322 abused by crafty players.
2323 * The server now makes the data directory its working directory.
2324 This also gets rid of a bug that changed the file name of the
2325 sector, power, nation and lostitems file unless econfig could not
2327 * The server now writes a pid file. Thanks to Daniel O'Connor.
2328 * More user friendly server startup: more errors are detected while
2329 the server still runs in the foreground, which makes it possible to
2330 complain to stderr and to exit unsuccessfully.
2331 * Early log messages went to the log file in the default data
2332 directory, even though econfig specifies another data directory.
2333 * Specifying an econfig file on the command line that can't be read
2335 * Errors in econfig are now fatal.
2336 * The server now refuses to start when it can't open data files.
2337 * News are now sorted and expire sanely.
2338 * Conditionals can now compare strings as well.
2339 * Corrupted down and motd files could cause buffer overflows.
2340 * Fix recon to let player abort at the flight path prompt.
2341 * power no longer rounds worldwide numbers for deities.
2342 * power command failed to recognize deities with non-zero country
2344 * Change output of production command so that columns are aligned
2345 even for large values. Replace column wkfc by more useful column
2347 * neweff and production miscalculated work when mil exceeded
2349 * neweff miscalculated work when the population limit exceeded 999.
2350 * Fix capping of avail when a big city is torn down.
2351 * Fix a bug in fire that allowed players to find all submarine uids.
2352 * Maximum sector population is no longer hardcoded, and now covered
2353 by xdump. Option RES_POP now affects mountains and plains as
2354 well. From Ray Hyatt.
2355 * Fix fina and news not to ignore errors in conditions.
2356 * The native Windows build now requires Windows Sockets 2.
2357 * The native Windows build now supports multiple instances of the
2358 service. The ability to supply additional startup parameters to
2359 the service has been removed.
2360 * Implement fairland command line parsing under Windows.
2361 * Improved fairland and emp_server usage message.
2363 * Minor info file and documentation fixes.
2364 * Much of the above was contributed by Ron Koenderink. Many thanks!
2366 Changes to Empire 4.2.19 - Thu Dec 23 20:24:24 UTC 2004
2367 * Fix order not to unload into full sectors.
2368 * Fix scrap not to dump stuff into full sectors. Excess stuff is now
2370 * Fix distribute not to conjure up a civilian when importing
2371 civilians from a dist center that doesn't have any.
2372 * Fix flak to resupply no more shells than actually needed.
2373 * Fix rounding error in shoot that could result in more people shot
2374 than actually there.
2375 * Fix info and apro error handling. In particular, do not leak
2376 potentially sensitive information on the server to players.
2377 * info no longer shows a random matching page when the topic argument
2378 is ambiguous. Instead, it lists all matching topics.
2379 * Embarked land units and overflying planes no longer spot each
2381 * Fix show command to show only sectors that players can designate
2382 (was broken in 4.2.18).
2383 * Fix a rounding error in production command column `max'.
2384 * Fix production command for overpopulated mountains and plains.
2385 * Fix tradeship ally cut to match documentation.
2386 * Fix plague, which was was broken in 4.2.14: it got stuck in stage I.
2387 * Fix a bug in aerial sonar where ships could mask submarines with
2388 the same number modulo 256.
2389 * Don't allow bombing of subs that were not detected.
2390 * MOTD and the game down message are now entirely separate: use `turn
2391 motd' for the MOTD, and `turn on' and `turn off' for the game down
2392 message. `turn on' no longer lets you edit the MOTD.
2393 * Remove option NUKEFAILDETONATE.
2394 * Option ORBIT is no longer optional.
2395 * New option GUINEA_PIGS to control experimental stuff not ready for
2396 prime time. If your deity enables this in a serious game, run!
2397 * Many xdump fixes. xdump is now enabled by option GUINEA_PIGS.
2398 * New ship and land selectors rflags, rpath.
2399 * New ship selectors for order: xstart. xend, ystart, yend,
2400 cargostart, cargend, amtstart, amtend
2401 * New ship selectors for sail: mobquota, path, follow.
2402 * New news selector uid.
2403 * Implement command line parsing under Windows where it was missing.
2404 * emp_server and and files print a usage message on command line
2406 * Fix how emp_server exits after being panicked by a signal. It can
2407 now dump core when this happens.
2408 * Fix bug in client that could crash it when a line of input starts
2410 * Client now gets user name from environment variable LOGNAME if set,
2412 * The native Windows build can now run as a service.
2413 * Redirecting client input now works under Windows.
2415 * Don't confuse work with loyalty in info Citizens.
2416 * Minor info file and manual page fixes.
2417 * Much of the above was contributed by Ron Koenderink and Marc
2418 Olzheim. Many thanks!
2420 Changes to Empire 4.2.18 - Tue Sep 7 14:08:59 UTC 2004
2421 * Fix info to accept abbreviated arguments under Windows. From Ron
2423 * Buying planes or land units loaded on something didn't work when
2424 that something moved.
2425 * Fix a bug that could produce update cascades with update policy
2427 * Fix delivery and distribution to grant packing bonus only to
2428 efficient sectors, just like move. Previously, delivery ignored
2429 efficiency, and distribution behaved as if it were an efficient
2430 sector without special bonuses.
2431 * New sector selectors loyal, access; ship selectors radius, access,
2432 xbuilt, ybuilt, builder, name; plane selectors radius, access,
2433 theta; land unit selectors radius, react, nland, access; lost
2435 * Fix sector selectors che, che_target; plane selectors att, def;
2436 nuke selector types; treaty selector exp; news selector time;
2437 commodity selectors type, xbuy, ybuy.
2438 * Option PLANENAMES is no longer optional.
2439 * Ensure config parameter variables and their description in
2440 configkeys[] are consistent. Inconsistencies there caused bugs in
2441 the past. From Marc Olzheim.
2442 * Complain if econfig file can't be read.
2443 * Better messages for errors in econfig file.
2444 * Remove unused econfig keys hard_tech and last_demand_update.
2445 * New econfig key news_keep_days to configure news expiry.
2446 * New econfig key anno_keep_days to configure announcement expiry.
2447 * Fix announcement expiry. It leaked file descriptors and memory,
2448 and could corrupt the anno file. From Ron Koenderink.
2449 * New command xdump: experimental extended dump. Disabled for now.
2450 * Bankers no longer round down debts, and they collect interest for
2451 the time debtors are idling at sub-prompts.
2452 * Loan interest calculation was broken at the due date and after a
2453 last payment made at the due date. With luck, debtors could abuse
2454 this to repay loans cheap (they couldn't gain cash, though), sharks
2455 to purchase loans cheap, and creditors to collect excessively.
2456 * Fix major bug in transport that allowed two cooperating countries
2458 * Don't report interdiction damage twice when transporting planes.
2459 * Fix message for attempting to transport a plane in a sector not
2460 owned by the player.
2461 * Fix confusing diagnostics when refusing to improve defense because
2462 option DEFENSE_INFRA is off.
2463 * Simplify confusing code in budget.
2464 * Fix spacing in output of budget and show.
2465 * Change one-way plane sorties to match ordinary sorties: offer
2466 carriers regardless of the sector they're in, require carriers to
2469 * Don't print owner of incoming missile twice when intercepting it.
2470 * Simplify constituent storage in product characteristics.
2471 * Replace remaining `variables' leftovers; mainly in unit
2473 * Remove leading spaces in deity unit dumps.
2474 * Replace inappropriate uses of compile time constant ETUS by 60.
2475 Deities don't change ETUS, they change etu_per_update by editing
2476 econfig. This nonsense dates back at least to chainsaw 3.31.
2477 * Change ship production (fishing and drilling for oil) to match
2478 sector production. Ship efficiency and tech are now relevant, and
2479 all people on board work. From Ron Koenderink.
2481 * Minor info file fixes.
2483 Changes to Empire 4.2.17 - Mon Aug 16 16:21:53 UTC 2004
2484 * Fix seeding of PRNG under Windows. The bug made updates occur at
2485 a predictable time in the update window. From Ron Koenderink.
2486 * Close major loophole in drop that allowed players to determine
2487 whether an arbitrary sector is sea, allied land, or other land.
2488 * fly could fly civilians into occupied sectors. For consistency
2489 with other means to move around stuff, this is no longer possible.
2490 * Don't allow flying to a carrier that doesn't have space for the
2491 planes. Previously, planes that did this were teleported home,
2492 which could be abused.
2493 * Close loophole in bomb that allowed players to find all
2495 * Fix move and explore not to crash when moving civilians to a sector
2496 without civilians, and interdiction destroys them all. Found and
2497 debugged by Jeff Cotter.
2498 * Fix printing of messages entered with turn command. '%' characters
2499 could cause havoc, even crashes.
2500 * Use sector's actual maximum population to compute chance of plague
2501 outbreak. Previously, code used 9999 for big cities and 999 for
2502 other sectors, and info Plague said 999. This makes all crowded
2503 sectors equally vulnerable, even mountains, plains, and inefficient
2505 * Oil derricks no longer drill and deplete more oil than they can
2506 hold. From Ron Koenderink.
2507 * Version 4.2.15's coordinate and list parsing fixes reject trailing
2508 junk. That's too strict. Silently ignore trailing junk as long as
2509 it starts with whitespace.
2510 * Version 4.2.15's selector rewrite broke some type literals,
2511 e.g. `?des=n' was interpreted as `?des=newdes'. Change to prefer
2512 type literals to selectors.
2513 * Nightly build patches game to get repeatable PRNG results. From
2516 Changes to Empire 4.2.16 - Wed Jun 16 18:56:16 UTC 2004
2517 * Previous version broke sector production when part of the work is
2518 used for sector construction. Fix courtesy Jeff Cotter.
2519 * Add rudimentary tests to nightly build. From Marc Olzheim.
2521 Changes to Empire 4.2.15 - Wed May 26 17:55:58 UTC 2004
2522 * test command no longer asks whether to abandon the sector.
2523 * explore command could generate a bogus `lost' record when it
2524 regains an abandoned start sector.
2525 * edit command now properly updates stats when editing tech level of
2526 ships, planes or land units. A few of these stats can be edited
2527 separately, which doesn't make much sense, and is now deprecated.
2528 * edit command no longer accepts efficiency values that would destroy
2529 the edited unit. Deities can still delete units by setting the
2531 * upgrade command used to charge an amount of avail that didn't match
2532 info upgrade. Neither the implemented nor the documented amount
2533 made much sense. Change it to 15% of the full build cost. Rewrite
2535 * Commands upgrade and build could be off by one when reporting
2537 * upgrade command reported rounded cost but charged unrounded
2538 cost. Round cost of upgrade down to match behavior of build.
2539 * Upgrading planes now preserves range when it is less than the
2540 maximum range. It used to set it to the new maximum range.
2541 * show bridge and show tower no longer claim bridge building requires
2542 `workers' (whatever that is), since it doesn't.
2543 * Replace option ROLLOVER_AVAIL by econfig parameter
2544 rollover_avail_max, which is the maximum amount of avail that rolls
2545 over. Previously, avail was limited after rollover, and even when
2546 ROLLOVER_AVAIL was off. Fix that.
2547 * Ships weren't always charged mobility for firing with option
2549 * Fix shell use of return torpedoes.
2550 * designate no longer complains twice about deity only designations.
2551 * Ensure designate zaps efficiency only when sector type really
2553 * Fix strength to always report mines to deities.
2554 * Remove option SHIP_DECAY.
2555 * Fix bug in sonar that could crash or yield unpredictable results
2556 near the true origin.
2557 * Fix buffer overflow in flash and wall.
2558 * Fix wall not to strip out first word of message.
2559 * Change market and order to use item types instead of mnemo
2560 characters internally.
2561 * Market now reports sales with full item names instead of single
2563 * buy now requires first argument to be an item name, as documented.
2564 * production command handled production backlog incorrectly, failed
2565 to limit production for production efficiency greater than one,
2566 e.g. agribusiness, and incorrectly limited raw material
2567 consumption. Also fix a rounding error. With help from Ron
2569 * Sector work was accidentally truncated to even.
2570 * Fix coordinate parsing for large numbers when WORLD_X or WORLD_Y
2571 don't divide SHRT_MAX+1.
2572 * Properly diagnose over-long unit lists.
2573 * Rewrite selector code. Old code let players smash the stack by
2574 supplying too many conditions. New code properly rejects ambiguous
2575 abbreviations and prefers exact matches. Selectors with names that
2576 collide with types, like land units' rad and spy, now work.
2577 Selectors with non-integral values, like land units' att, now work.
2578 * survey used to display hundreds for everything but variables. Now
2579 it displays hundreds only for values that can be large.
2580 * Rewrite info survey. Document ability to survey properties other
2581 than items and resources.
2582 * Rewrite info build, since it was inaccurate and poorly structured.
2583 * Fix info fire on required military. From Marc Olzheim.
2584 * New fairland argument -R to set the PRNG seed. Print the seed.
2585 This allows you to recreate the same world again.
2586 * New facilities to deal with internal errors. These crash when the
2587 server is started with -d, which is appropriate for debugging, and
2588 potentially disastrous for running a real game.
2589 * Automated nightly builds.
2592 Changes to Empire 4.2.14 - Mon Mar 22 09:04:12 UTC 2004
2593 * Options NEWPOWER, NEW_STARVE and NEW_WORK are no longer optional.
2594 * Gripe about unknown options in econfig.
2595 * Remove option GRAB_THINGS.
2596 * Utility program files takes new option -f.
2597 * Remove utility programs land, ore and perfect, which don't compile
2598 since 4.2.0 (Oct '98).
2599 * fairland no longer warns when it added resources, but when it
2601 * Fallout code could claim destruction of more items than actually
2603 * Fix recursive resupply (resupply from supply land unit triggering a
2604 resupply of the land unit) when just testing for how much can be
2605 resupplied. The bug could have led to insufficient resupply.
2606 * Fix recursive resupply not to consume all fuel in supply units. No
2607 supply units consuming fuel exist in the stock game.
2608 * Limit delivery and distribution thresholds to ITEM_MAX (9999).
2609 Distribution threshold were previously limited to 10000, and
2610 delivery thresholds to 65528.
2611 * Limit items in sectors to ITEM_MAX (9999). Commands give and buy
2612 used to limit to 9990. Market transactions and commands explore,
2613 move, drop and fly to 32767. Limiting in autonav code (order
2614 command) didn't work. Item delivery used to stop at 9990,
2615 distribution at 9999. Food growing and sector production used to
2616 stop at 9999. Grind, assault lunchboxes, demobilization, mine
2617 sweeping and che liberating uw could theoretically attempt to
2618 increase items beyond 65535, which would have been ignored
2619 (destroying the increase).
2620 * Properly saturate fallout at FALLOUT_MAX (9999). Previously,
2621 fallout increases behaved inconsistently. Increases beyond 65535
2622 could get ignored, or fallout could saturate at 9999, or it could
2623 overflow at 65536 (that would take quite some nuking, though).
2624 * Properly saturate mines at MINES_MAX (65535). Previously, a mining
2625 operation that would have gone beyond 65535 was ignored.
2626 * Fix `are we loading or unloading' tests for load, unload, lload and
2628 * Fix editing of land unit attack and defense values. Implement
2629 editing of ship defense values. Contributed by Ron Koenderink.
2630 * edit now edits che number and target separately.
2631 * Fix edit to properly extend unit files. Contributed by Ron
2633 * Major internal reorganisation: Sectors need space for items,
2634 deliveries and distribution thresholds. To save space, the
2635 ancients invented `variables': a collection of key-value pairs,
2636 missing means zero value, space for `enough' keys. This
2637 complicates the code, as assigning to a `variable' can fail for
2638 lack of space. Over time, `enough' increased, and for quite some
2639 time now `variables' have been *wasting* space. Replace them,
2640 except in unit characteristics, where they are read-only, and will
2641 be replaced later. This also removes misfeatures like plague
2642 outbreaks silently deleting deliveries.
2643 * Remove disabled commands dissolve and mult. Remove configuration
2644 parameters minmult and maxmult.
2645 * trade command indexed an array out of bounds when attempting to
2646 display the plague as commodity. Fix.
2647 * New make goal interix. Contributed by Ron Koenderink.
2648 * The type selector now prefers an exact match to a partial match.
2649 ?type=sb now selects sb, not sbc, even when sbc happens to be found
2651 * Value of selector sell was always zero, remove it.
2652 * Clean up selector code.
2653 * satellite now displays all sectors owned by other players, and none
2654 else. It used to display all but sea, mountains, sanctuaries,
2655 wasteland and wilderness.
2656 * map commands now display wilderness and plains owned by other
2657 players as '?'. Radar commands now display all wilderness and
2659 * Fix power timestamp for Windows. Contributed by Ron Koenderink.
2660 * Make client abort the current command on ^C under Windows, as
2661 everywhere else. Contributed by Ron Koenderink.
2662 * Command line parser interpreted trailing whitespace as an another
2663 (empty) argument. Ignore it instead.
2664 * Properly declare stuff in headers, include proper system headers.
2665 Remove all nested external declarations. Source code is now fully
2666 prototyped. Enable appropriate gcc warnings.
2667 * Fix several type errors. Some may have been show-stoppers on big
2668 endian machines where sizeof(long) != sizeof(int).
2669 * Remove pre-ISO C compatibility cruft (hey, it's been only fifteen
2671 * Various portability fixes. Some bugs may have been show-stoppers
2672 when sizeof(long) != sizeof(int). With help from Marc Olzheim and
2674 * Move some code to more logical places. Remove some unused code,
2675 some of which was hard to port.
2676 * The files program could print error messages to a log file in some
2677 circumstances. Make it print to stderr.
2678 * deliver can now change direction without changing the threshold.
2679 * deliver now provides appropriate context when prompting for
2681 * Login command play no longer ignores up to two arguments if there
2683 * Fix payoff (was broken in 4.2.13).
2684 * Capability fish didn't work together with capability oil.
2685 * Fix and clarify plague outbreak chance in info Plague.
2686 * Fix RES_POP maximum population in info Research.
2687 * Fix info telegram and info announce on ~ escapes.
2688 * Update info Selector to match code.
2689 * Document all undocumented unit capabilities and stats.
2690 * Document submarines' ability to carry landspies.
2691 * Fix info shoot on security units.
2692 * Various small info file fixes.
2693 * Many fixes in the troff macro package for info files.
2694 * Many fixes for translating info files to HTML.
2695 * Many info file markup fixes.
2697 Changes to Empire 4.2.13 - Fri Feb 13 22:12:36 UTC 2004
2698 * Source code reindented and cleaned up somewhat.
2699 * Various small info file fixes.
2700 * Fixed change requiring 254 BTUs even when not charging any
2702 * Fixed tactical non-marine missile crash.
2703 * Fixed spy unit detection chance for eff<100.
2704 * Fixed output of sorder.
2705 * `edit' can now work non-interactively. Contributed by Ron
2707 * Fixed and extended edit for sectors.
2708 * Fixed use of errno.
2709 * Minor security fix: doconfig now writes example auth entry as
2711 * Fixed reading of country name and password in client for Windows.
2712 * Replace use of some obsolete non-portable library functions by
2713 portable equivalents.
2714 * designate now warns about redesignated capital only when it
2715 succeeds in redesignating the capital.
2716 * attack could be off by one when reporting required unit mobility.
2717 * Fixed command matching. Unique prefixes were not always
2718 recognized, and junk suffixes were ignored.
2719 * Removed bestdistpath. bestpath yields the same results.
2720 * Renamed lstats to lstat for consistency and to match info page.
2721 * Fixed non-portable fd_set * arguments of select().
2722 * New `map' flag `h' to highlight own sectors. Contributed by Marc
2724 * Fixed `sabo' reporting damage to player in deity coordinates.
2725 * New option ROLLOVER_AVAIL. Contributed by Drake Diedrich.
2726 * Fix Windows server shutdown on reading "quit" from stdin.
2727 * Land units now fortify automatically when mobility plus growth
2728 exceeds the maximum. With code from Marc Olzheim.
2729 * Wandering che are less predictable.
2730 * Land units no longer regenerate mobility faster while it is
2732 * Fixed emp_client -k.
2733 * No longer allow pirates to ferret out where a ship was built.
2734 * Fixed map commands to reject bmap flags `t' and `r' instead of
2736 * Fixed lmine shell resupply.
2737 * News no longer call all sub-launched missiles nuclear.
2738 * Incoming missiles are now reported with coordinates.
2739 * Removed some code that served no purpose except crashing on
2741 * Fixed Mac OSX and AIX build problems.
2742 * Don't resolve player IP addresses for now, because it can crash
2743 with certain versions of GNU libc.
2744 * Fixed recording of lost nukes.
2746 Changes to Empire 4.2.12 - Mon Aug 18 16:54:21 MDT 2003
2747 * Corrected contact information for Wolfpack.
2748 * Sector isn't abandoned until move or explore is complete.
2749 * Fixed multiple cases where return value of getstarg() was
2750 used without being checked which crashed the server.
2751 * Used stdarg.h instead of varargs.h.
2752 * Call only_subs and save result before mission frees attacker
2753 list. Call with free list could cause server crash.
2754 * Fixed spy sat map for units on opposite side of world wrap.
2755 * Don't sleep in main thread when called from signal handler.
2756 * Fixed error checking in pthreads.
2757 * Properly detach pthreads.
2758 * Pass unlocked mutex to pthread_mutex_unlock.
2759 * Cope with interrupted sleep in pthread empth_sleep to prevent
2761 * Added server configurable update window.
2762 * Initialized variables passed to setsockopt in accept.c.
2763 * Fixed bug where sharing bmap with uncontacted country crashes
2766 Changes to Empire 4.2.11 - Sun Sep 1 09:54:59 MDT 2002
2767 * Added compile option for the Mac OSX architecture.
2768 * Fixed bug in cargo where unit array was indexed by shp_maxno
2769 instead of lnd_maxno.
2770 * Fixed bug in reject where aborting the command crashes the
2772 * Can't buy land units into enemy headquarters.
2773 * Added sabotage command and commando unit.
2774 * Spies moving by themselves will not trigger interdiction.
2775 * Fixed error in map distance calculation that caused errant
2777 * Ships going under -127 mobility will be set to -127 mob and
2778 not roll over to positive mobility.
2779 * Corrected plane cost in info Maintenance.
2780 * Changed error message for loans rejected for being too big.
2781 * Land units will take casualty damage proportional to their
2782 ability to carry mil.
2783 * Fixed bug where "route i *" crashes server.
2784 * Cannot upgrade planes in orbit.
2785 * Fixed bug in declare with deity aborting command at last
2786 prompt crashes the server.
2787 * Coastwatch notify works with NO_FORT_FIRE option.
2788 * Thread that kills idle connection will charge player for
2789 minutes the player was logged on.
2790 * Removed separate sendeof at end of execute from emp_client
2791 that logged players off on certain platforms.
2792 * Updated player idle counter during read prompt so players
2793 wouldn't be kicked off during long flashes or writing telegrams.
2794 * LOSE_CONTACT will work as advertised.
2795 * Allied units marching through 0 mobility conquered sectors
2796 are charged at least LND_MINMOBCOST.
2798 Changes to Empire 4.2.10 - Mon Aug 13 14:34:39 MDT 2001
2799 * Assault can reinforce own sector when SLOW_WAR is enabled.
2800 * emp_client no longer converts lines into tags but still verifies executes,
2801 pipes, and file redirect match players input.
2802 * Added pboard command to capture enemy planes in your territory.
2803 * Declaring war when at Sitzkrieg won't return relations to Mobilizing.
2804 * Declaring war won't charge money if you're already Mobilizing.
2805 * Added multiple territory fields.
2806 * "show nuke build" displays the proper avail.
2807 * retreating land units will only retreat to sectors owned by the player
2809 * added hard cap of "250 + easy" to limit_level.
2810 * education p.e. calculation divides edu constant by etu per update.
2811 * Added patch for Linux for the PowerPC.
2813 Changes to Empire 4.2.9 - Sun Jan 7 15:49:13 PST 2001
2814 * Fixed data corruption when bogus target gets fired upon.
2815 * Increased size of ancillary stacks to prevent stack overflow.
2816 * Changed all references to empire.cx.
2817 * Ships, planes, and land units lost to lack of maintenance will now be
2819 * No longer allowed to sack deity's capital.
2820 * Accuracy calculation in land unit support was backwards.
2821 * Corrected formula for likelihood of plague in info Plague.
2822 * Fixed files to correctly size map and bmap files from econfig file.
2823 * No longer allowed to add country 0. It corrupts deity country.
2825 Changes to Empire 4.2.8 - Mon Oct 9 17:35:35 MDT 2000
2826 * Fixed range in radar.t and Sector-types.t. Maximum range at infinite
2828 * Changed so that player can't drop civilians into occupied sectors.
2829 * Fixed bug that crashes update if etus/update is less than 8.
2830 * Fixed sometimes not reporting overflights
2831 * Fixing flak for units/ships to be in all sectors as they should be
2832 * Updated order of firing flak in Flak.t.
2833 * Fixed 80% efficient planes on ships must be maintained.
2834 * Fixed initial MOB_ACCESS check thread sleep time was set by an uninitialized
2836 * Removed "TEMPORARILY DISABLED" message from mission command for escort
2837 missions. Escort missions have been re-enabled since 4.0.15.
2838 * Using sonar from the navigate command will print the sonar map.
2839 * Eliminated annoying error messages when using navigate with conditionals.
2840 * Fixed Technology.t to correctly add 1 before taking the logarithm.
2841 * Fixed bug that allowed players to steal opponents maps.
2842 * Put time limit for bidding on market and trade in econfig file.
2843 * Moved hours file information into econfig file.
2844 * Added comments on setting update policy in econfig file.
2845 * Added logging of cases where write extends data file by more than one id.
2846 * Option MARKET is turned off by default.
2848 Changes to Empire 4.2.7 - Fri Mar 10 18:41:04 PST 2000
2849 * Added new NF_SACKED flag to indicate when a country has had it's
2850 capital sacked. This flag is only cleared when the country actively
2851 redesignates it's capital using the "capital" command, and changed
2852 capital.t to reflect this (no more re-sacking after an update if the
2853 country doesn't reset and repeating until they are out of cash.)
2854 * Added land unit to edit command for planes.
2855 * Added nuketype to edit command for planes.
2856 * Changed so that if the leader of a group of units is a train, the
2857 railways are used for bestpath instead of roadways.
2858 * Changed mission command to also print reaction radius of reserve
2859 missions when set for land units.
2860 * Changed Flak.t to reflect guns having to be loaded onto a land unit
2862 * Changed so that visitor countries cannot change their name or password.
2863 * Changed so that you cannot upgrade deity planes, ships or units.
2864 * Changed so that you know where missions are flown from.
2865 * Changed so that the airport owner you fly a mission from is informed.
2866 * Changed so that preperations for takeoff are reported to the owner of
2867 the sector, ship or unit a plane is taking off from if it is not owned
2868 by the owner of the plane.
2869 * Changed so that when a sector reverts during a guerrilla revolt, the
2870 mobility is not reset. When MOB_ACCESS is not enabled, this used to mean
2871 you would always get at least an updates worth of mobility. With
2872 MOB_ACCESS, sectors that reverted during the update were useless, since you
2873 got no mobility for a long time. This fixes that problem, and makes che
2874 more useful as well.
2875 * Changed so that air defense missions don't always send up every plane in the
2876 area, but instead always send up at most two times the number of incoming
2877 planes (for each interdicting country.) This helps to stop 1 plane from
2878 stripping the mobility from 25 air defense planes all at once, but doesn't
2879 limit it to n+1 as there is for regular interception.
2880 * Clarified deity reversion of sectors in Sector-ownership.t
2881 * Clarified production efficiency and added pointer to "show sector cap"
2883 * Clarified nuketype selector for planes in Selector.t
2884 * Clarified that fortifying units does not affect mission status in info
2885 pages for mission and fortify.
2886 * Clarified fuel syntax upon error in fuel command in empmod.c.
2887 * Cleaned up comments causing minor complaints in some builds.
2888 * Fixed bug in loans where you could collect on proposed loans.
2889 * Fixed production command to be more accurate (though it *still* has some
2890 rounding errors, it's better.)
2891 * Fixed potential memory leak in air defense missions.
2892 * Fixed bug where you couldn't pinbomb some commodities if other commodities
2893 didn't already exist in the sector.
2894 * Fixed bug where you couldn't build 0 crew planes without military in the
2895 sector. (This is different from needing at least 1 military to build all
2896 planes that need a crew which introduced another related bug earlier.)
2897 * Fixed bug where scrapping land unit 0 could cause erroneous transfer
2898 messages to be displayed for deity owned planes.
2899 * Fixed bug where land units on ships in a sector taken over were blown
2901 * Fixed bug where planes on ships in a sector taken over were blown up
2903 * Fixed bug in sdump printing origx and origy in deity coordinates.
2904 * Fixed bug in satellites showing wrong sectors (sometimes) when using the
2906 * Fixed bug in launch showing wrong satellite target (showed asat instead
2907 of the target satellite.)
2908 * Fixed bug where you could gain information not normally available using
2909 the "fire" command to determine sector type information.
2910 * Fixed bug in market/trade creating extra money when loans are taken out.
2911 * Fixed problem with land units not being reported sunk after being sunk
2912 on a ship that was nuked or wastelanded in a sector.
2913 * Fixed problem with Spies.t using "llook" instead of "llookout".
2914 * Fixed problem in lwp/arch.c including jmp_buf.h instead of setjmp.h
2915 on some Linux boxes.
2916 * Fixed problem with plague infection being way too high in cities when
2917 the BIG_CITY option is enabled.
2918 * Fixed bug in edit command getting confused with arguments.
2919 * Fixed bug in ask_move_in_off asking you to move in a negative number of
2920 troops (hey, it could happen. :) )
2921 * Fixed bug in add command not keeping flags or relations initially correct.
2922 * Fixed bug in torpedo command sometimes telling victim about torpedo
2923 sightings even when way out of range.
2924 * Fixed bug in spy command not reporting planes in adjacent sectors, as well
2925 as not formatting them properly when reporting them.
2926 * Fixed bug in satellite with noisy transmission causing a potential
2927 crash of the server with non-100% efficient satellites.
2928 * Fixed potential crashing of the server during satellite display when not
2929 calculating distances to ships and units correctly.
2930 * Fixed bug where planes in non-allied sectors, ships and units could be
2932 * Fixed bug where planes on the trading block could be used on missions.
2933 * Fixed bug where planes and units that get traded don't have mobility set
2934 correctly when using MOB_ACCESS option.
2935 * Fixed bug which made security units virtually useless.
2936 * Fixed access times and mobility not being set right when building planes,
2937 ships, units, bridges and bridge towers when MOB_ACCESS is enabled.
2938 * Fixed minor formatting problem with launch of satellites.
2939 * Fixed minor formatting problem with planes with greater than 999 tech.
2940 * Fixed minor formatting problem with ships with greater than 999 tech.
2941 * Fixed problem with "llook" showing up in TOP info file.
2942 * Fixed problem with lwp Makefile choking on NT builds with clean target.
2943 * General cleanup of potentially ambiguous statements.
2945 Changes to Empire 4.2.6 - Fri Jun 4 05:55:20 PDT 1999
2946 * Added "TECH_POP" as an option where technology costs more to make
2947 as your population grows past 50K civilians. It is disabled by
2949 * Changed "produce" command to accurately print what the true p.e. is.
2950 * Changed "update" command to display if mobility updating is enabled for
2952 * Fixed bug where toggling off the coastwatch flag also turned off
2953 forts firing on hostile ships coming into range.
2954 * Fixed bug where assaulting your own land would violate any treaties
2955 you have where assaults are a violation.
2956 * Fixed bug where all planes (even those without need for a crew, such
2957 as missiles) needed at least 1 military to build.
2958 * Fixed bug where when a ship sinks during the update due to lack of maint,
2959 land units and planes on it were left stranded.
2960 * Fixed bug where when a land unit dies during the update due to lack of
2961 maint, land units and planes on it were left stranded on it.
2962 * Fixed bug where nukes could be lost due to MOB_ACCESS updating mobility
2964 * Fixed bug in "show sector capabilities" not showing products correctly.
2965 * Fixed bug in "show tower build" printing "bridges" instead of "bridge
2967 * Fixed bug in sectors that don't revolt not showing up as lost items.
2968 * Fixed bug where maps with an X of exactly 200 is not drawing third line.
2969 * Fixed bug where MOB_ACCESS was not updating the mobility just before
2971 * Fixed bug in the way treaties are examined and sometimes produce
2973 * Fixed edit to allow creating negative mobility for sectors.
2974 * Fixed setsector to allow creating negative mobility for sectors.
2975 * Fixed bug where when writing out the value of a sector that had
2976 negative mobility and was damaged in combat, mobility was being
2978 * Fixed Taxes.t info page to reflect that captured civvies only pay
2980 * Fixed Technology.t info page to reflect TECH_POP option.
2981 * Fixed navigate.t info page to reflect that only ships in the fleet
2982 in the same sector that are fired upon have damage divided up.
2983 * Made techlists toggle on by default (so things are shown in order of
2984 technological advances.)
2986 Changes to Empire 4.2.5 - Mon Mar 1 06:42:24 PST 1999
2987 * Added optimization to increasing mobility to check if an object is
2988 already at max mob, just return since it can't be increased.
2989 * Added "-ltermcap" for client libs for hp build (it was already in
2991 * Added clearing of telegram flags after the update so that the next
2992 telegram is flagged as new and not part of the update.
2993 * Fixed Update-sequence.t to reflect MOB_ACCESS.
2994 * Fixed bug where fortification amount was not being limited to
2995 maximum mobility for land units (land_mob_max).
2996 * Fixed bug where land unit fortification strength was being calculated
2997 by using 127 instead of land_mob_max.
2998 * Fixed bug where scrapping land units was creating military.
2999 * Fixed description of sect_mob_neg_factor in econfig file.
3000 * Increased speed of PT boats.
3002 Changes to Empire 4.2.4 - Tue Feb 2 05:47:44 PST 1999
3003 * Added check to make military values match up correctly for land
3005 * Fixed bug in doconfig not putting ipglob.c in the right place.
3006 * Fixed bug where attacking deity sectors will violate a treaty.
3007 * Fixed newspaper.t information file.
3008 * Fixed potential bug in fixing up timestamp information when restarting a
3009 game with MOB_ACCESS turned on.
3010 * Fixed bug in explore command not setting mobility to correct
3011 value when MOB_ACCESS was enabled.
3012 * Fixed bug in enlist setting mobility incorrectly sometimes.
3013 * Added doc/backup file for deities which recommends how backups and
3014 restores of the data directory should be done.
3016 Changes to Empire 4.2.3 - Wed Jan 13 06:02:35 PST 1999
3017 * Added linux-pthreads target and build for using pthreads under Linux.
3018 * Added NO_FORT_FIRE option which disables the ability of forts to
3020 * Added more error checking and recovery for corrupt data files.
3021 * Changed alphapos target to alpha-pthreads for better clarity.
3022 * Changed fairland to allow 0 sector distance to other islands and
3023 continents (James Risner)
3024 * Changed "frg" and "dam" land unit stats to "rng" and "fir" so they
3025 match the way ships are described (since this is how they really work.)
3026 * Changed Unit-types.t to now describe "rng" as firing range of a unit,
3027 and "fir" as the number of guns that a land unit fires.
3028 * Cleaned up misc. build warnings.
3029 * Changed artillery damage to be 5 + d6 per gun firing from just d6
3030 per gun firing and updated Damage.t to reflect this change.
3031 * Changed artillery firing ranges to be like ships ranges - divided
3032 by two, and modified them to make more sense.
3033 * Changed artillery units to be "slightly" :) more powerful.
3034 * Changed "cavalry" unit to tech 30 and lowered mil content to 20.
3035 * Changed "artillery" unit to tech 35.
3036 * Changed so that guns are no longer required to build units, and
3037 that guns must be loaded onto artillery units for them to fire.
3038 Client developers note: the show command has not changed yet to
3039 remove the 'guns' column (since guns are no longer required) but
3040 will in a future revision (possibly 4.2.4) so "be prepared" for
3041 "show land build" to change. :)
3042 * Fixed landunitgun to handle all the damage calculations like it should.
3043 * Fixed bug sinking planes when the ship they are on sinks.
3044 * Fixed bug destroying planes when the land unit they are on is destroyed.
3045 * Fixed bug where land units could fire support without enough military.
3046 * Fixed bug in abandoning sectors by marching out a land unit where it
3047 would not let you sometimes (uninitialized variable problem.)
3048 * Fixed gets problem in files.c (James Risner)
3049 * Fixed bug in determinig operations range of a ship.
3050 * Fixed bug in building planes where you could manufacture military.
3051 * Fixed warnings in threading package(s).
3052 * Fixed fire.t to reflect new firing changes.
3053 * Fixed lstat.t to reflect new firing changes.
3054 * Fixed sstat.t to reflect the way things really work.
3055 * Fixed Ship-types.t to reflect the way things really work.
3056 * Fixed the way shutdowns work to hopefully better protect data files.
3057 * Fixed bug in attacking when sector mobility is less than 0 and it would
3058 prompt for attacking with a negative amount of military.
3059 * Fixed typo in fire.t stating wrong parameters for firing from a sector.
3060 * Fixed bug in client when it prompts for country name it was putting
3061 an extraneous end of line on the end that needed to be stripped off.
3062 * Fixed problems running on Linux running on an Alpha machine. Thanks
3063 to Rocky Mountain Internet and Jeremy A. Cunningham for giving us time
3064 on a machine to work out the bugs. (Note that the only build that
3065 works on Linux/Alpha is the linux-pthreads)
3067 Changes to Empire 4.2.2 - Sun Dec 27 12:46:34 PST 1998
3068 * Added some code optimizations into the update code when building paths.
3069 * Added some new cacheing for building paths to help speed up updates.
3070 * Added so that you can use "name" and "password" with the change command
3071 as well as "country" and "representative".
3072 * Added flag to power command so that if you are a deity and enter
3073 a negative number of countries you want to see, you see the power chart
3074 for that many countries without power numbers on the next line. Only
3075 useful for deities that want to see the chart un-broken up by that line.
3076 * Added new functionality to fortify command. You can now use a negative
3077 fortification value to cause the unit to be fortified and leave at
3078 least that much mobility on the unit. I.E. "fort * -67" will fortify
3079 all units and make sure the mobility of each unit doesn't go below
3080 67. If the mobility is already below that level (or equal) the unit
3082 * Added that the realm command prints "Realm #n is x:x,y:y" after
3083 you set a new realm.
3084 * Added TREATIES option and enabled it by default.
3085 * Added "no depth-charging subs" and "no new land units" treaty
3087 * Added Trannie Carter's basic client fix to use fgets instead of gets.
3088 * Changed market and command to only print the lowest priced lot of
3089 each given commodity by default. If you specify "all" it shows
3090 all lots on the market, and if you specify a specific item, it shows
3091 all lots of that item type.
3092 * Changed start command to only write out sector if it changed.
3093 * Changed stop command to only write out sector if it changed.
3094 * Changed how plane names were changed on server startup if the
3095 PLANENAMES option was enabled.
3096 * Changed move command to use standard askyn function for abandoning
3098 * Changed plane overlight sightings to take stealth into account,
3099 and if the planes managed to evade all flak and interceptors, they
3100 are not marked as "spotted" over enemy sectors.
3101 * Changed all units with the supply flag to have their marching speeds
3102 based on efficiency since that is their purpose. What this means is
3103 that supply units and trains are more effective at 100% than at 10%
3104 (just as fighting units are more effective at 100% than at 10%, but
3105 their effectiveness is determined by how well they fight, not how well
3106 they "run away, run away!" :) )
3107 * Changed so that flash toggle is on by default for POGO at setup
3109 * Changed so that when a sector is taken, all land units owned by the
3110 current owner are treated as planes are during takeovers (i.e. there
3111 is a pretty good chance they are blown up, and if not, they change owner
3112 to the attacker and are beat up pretty good.)
3113 * Fixed treaties to work again.
3114 * Fixed bug in taking over land units not using correct pointer (can
3115 cause a crash or data corruption.)
3116 * Fixed collect command to wipe deliver and distribution information
3118 * Fixed potential bug in bmap not working when destination bmap has
3120 * Fixed bug in shark command not getting right nation structure.
3121 * Fixed bug in server where empty commands (for example, all spaces
3122 or tabs) were being reported as bogus commands. They are now just
3124 * Fixed bug in scrap not dropping land units off of scrapped units carrying
3126 * Fixed bug in news where boarding of land units was reported backwards.
3127 * Fixed bug in calculating new people when growing them during an update.
3128 * Fixed missing -ltermcap in HP/UX build.
3129 * Fixed setsector to limit mobility to 127 not 255 (255 was being caught
3130 later and being reset to 0 anyway)
3131 * Fixed Sector-types.t to show a '\e' instead of a '/' for wasteland,
3132 since that is what it really is.
3133 * Fixed retreat.t documentation to reflect the "retreat upon failed
3135 * Fixed bug where satellites were not orbiting the world during the
3137 * Fixed bug in torpedos being too smart. They knew how to jump over
3138 land! :) Now the "line_of_sight" routine is used to determine if a
3139 torpedo has a straight path to the destination. If it doesn't, the
3140 torpedo no longer jumps over land, but instead slams into it. This was
3141 an interesting bug because you could torp ships on the other side of
3142 a very skinny island as long as they were in range, even if there was
3143 no sea route possible.
3144 * Fixed bug when pinbombing and you run out of an object to pinbomb (land
3145 units for example) but you still have to pick something to bomb. For
3146 ships it worked ok (just aborted that it couldn't find any more ships)
3147 and this was fixed for land units and planes.
3148 * Fixed server crashing bug when flying a plane and not carrying
3150 * Fixed bug in move losing commodities when it runs out of room in the
3151 destination sector. Goods are now attempted to be returned to the
3152 start sector, and apporpriate steps taken if the start sector is no
3154 * Fixed march to prompt you before you abandon a sector you own by
3155 marching out the last land unit.
3156 * Fixed check functions to only check the relevant portions of the structure
3157 and not the timestamp info that doesn't affect how the object functions.
3158 * Fixed bug in spy command that always told you if a spy unit was in a
3160 * Fixed bug in displaying of land unit missions not showing correct land
3162 * Fixed bug in wire command where new announcements that you read at
3163 the last second don't get wiped out properly.
3164 * Fixed bug where announcement file could be corrupted by very long lines.
3165 * Fixed bug where bmap was not set when player was told what kind of
3166 sector they were attacking (this was an old abusable bug that was
3167 removed long ago to fix the abuse, and it's been fixed in a non-abusable
3169 * Fixed bug where change command would warn you about monetary and
3170 BTU costs, but not prompt you to break out if you didn't want to really
3171 change your country name.
3172 * Fixed bug in sub-launched nukes that are intercepted being reported in
3173 the news incorrectly.
3174 * Fixed bug in load where you could abandon a sector and not know it by
3175 loading your last civilians or military onto a ship.
3176 * Fixed potential memory leak in autonav code.
3177 * Fixed potential bug where you could possibly determine if a sector is
3178 owned or not using one way plane missions.
3179 * Fixed Damage.t info page to properly show damages for planes and
3181 * Fixed deliver.t to include syntax for command.
3182 * Fixed country.t to include syntax for command.
3183 * Fixed bug where ships on orders were not adding radar information to
3184 the bmap during an update.
3185 * Fixed bug where ships on sail were not adding radar information to
3186 the bmap during an update.
3187 * Fixed bestownedpath code to use the bmap properly. Note this is a very
3188 important bug fix. When navigating a ship, players are no longer given
3189 free information that they would not normally know. For example, if you
3190 try sailing your ship off into uncharted areas of your bmap, the bestpath
3191 code will only use as much information as you have on-hand (i.e. your
3192 bmap) to plan out your path for you. If you have no information on an
3193 area, it just keeps forging on, until bumping into something. Of course,
3194 after the initial exploration through an area, the bmap will be set and
3195 used for all future sailings through that area. Harbors and bridges
3196 are still checked for construction worthiness if you know where they
3197 are (i.e. they are on your bmap.) (Overall, what happened before
3198 was that the bestpath code would route your ship around islands that
3199 you didn't even know were there, and you could use various commands
3200 to see how that ship was going to sail during the update and thus you
3201 gained information that you wouldn't normally know.)
3202 * Merged bestpath and bestownedpath and wrote new wrappers, "BestShipPath"
3203 and "BestAirPath" to use it properly. It is also good to note that
3204 bestownedpath is used to determine paths for ships and for planes,
3205 and that best_path (which uses the A* algorithm) is used for all land
3206 based paths, and that the two are never interchanged.
3207 * Removed "jet recon" plane (it slipped in during the PLANENAMES conversion,
3208 and RECON was never used before.)
3209 * Removed extraneous "resnoise" and "resbenefit" functions and combined
3210 the two for setresource and setsector commands.
3212 Changes to Empire 4.2.1 - Tue Nov 3 12:56:20 PST 1998
3213 * Fixed problem with global/plane.c not defining last structure element
3214 properly, and thus causing crashes when accessing certain plane
3215 routines. This happened during the move to make the PLANENAMES option
3216 run-time configurable.
3218 Changes to Empire 4.2.0 - Thu Oct 29 06:27:15 PST 1998
3219 * Bumped rev to 4.2.0 since this is a major release (the server is now
3220 run-time configurable for just about everything and is released under
3222 * Put in official licensing information.
3223 * Re-arranged and commented the econfig (Empire Configuration) file. The
3224 auto-generated "data/econfig" file is now pumped out chock full of
3225 comments (which may or may not be useful.) Since the server is
3226 pretty much fully run-time configurable (MAXNOC is not, but it gets
3227 a default of 99 anyway) deities will probably be spending more time
3229 * Added server support for building under NT, including mods from
3230 Doug Hay and Steve McClure to get the server building and running
3231 under NT. (This was built using MSVC++ 5.0 on NT 4.0 and command
3233 * Added Doug Hay's ntthread.c implementation for NT threading.
3234 * Added max pop column to "show sector stats" output.
3235 * Added lboard command for boarding land units from sectors. Only raw
3236 mil can board land units, and only mil and land units aboard the unit
3237 being boarded fight back.
3238 * Added GODNEWS option. When enabled, the deity giving people stuff
3239 is shown in the news.
3240 * Added bridge tower sector ('@')
3241 * Added BRIDGETOWERS option. When enabled you can build bridge towers
3242 from a bridge span. You can then build bridge spans from the tower.
3243 If the tower is destroyed ( <20% eff) bridges connected fall unless
3244 supported on the other side. You can only build bridge towers in open
3245 water not adjacent to land and other towers. Expensive.
3246 * Added plains sector ('~') - Max pop is 1/40th regular sectors, and
3247 it is deity creatable only (can't redesignate unless you wasteland it
3249 * Changed "info all" to no longer use printdir, instead it just uses the "all"
3250 info page which contains this information.
3251 * Changed so you can now load up to 2 spy units onto non-land unit carrying
3252 submarines if the LANDSPIES option is enabled. Useful for sneaking up
3253 to shore and spying on your neighbors.
3254 * Changed so spies unloaded from ships are not given as gifts, they are just
3256 * Changed build command to handle building towers ("build t")
3257 * Changed show command to show tower stats ("show t b")
3258 * Changed reject so you can now reject things from any country except
3259 deity countries (this now includes sanctuary countries and visitor
3260 countries you don't want to deal with)
3261 * Changed ndump to dump nuclear stockpile ID as well.
3262 * Changed flash so that if someone allied to you is either not logged on or
3263 not accepting flashes, you are notified. This is info you could gain
3264 otherwise since you can see other countries that are allied to you via
3266 * Fixed bug in news command when HIDDEN mods are enabled.
3267 * Fixed distribute command to only write out to the database if we
3268 actually changed the sector (i.e. if we really moved the dist
3269 center, we write. Otherwise, it makes no point.)
3270 * Fixed threshold command to only write out to the database if
3271 we actually changed the sector (i.e. if we really changed the
3272 threshold, we write. Otherwise, it makes no point.)
3273 * Fixed - population growth and truncation in "Update-sequence.t" info
3275 * Fixed the way fortify takes mobility away from a land unit if
3276 engineers are present.
3277 * Fixed bug in buying commodities at the last minute not resetting the
3278 time correctly in all situations.
3279 * Fixed bug in building nukes where it would always ask if you tried
3280 building more than one at a time.
3281 * Fixed bug where if you put (either by building or by transporting)
3282 more than 127 of one type of nuke in a sector, they all got lost. A
3283 negative wrapover sort of thing.
3284 * Fixed ndump to print # of stockpiles dumped.
3285 * Fixed ndump.t to reflect changes
3286 * Fixed bug in build command that didn't account for EOL characters.
3287 * Fixed bug where you could use planes to drop conquered populace
3288 * Fixed bug in distribute command in how it checked for current distribution
3290 * Fixed pr_flash and pr_inform to no longer send messages if the player
3291 is still in the process of logging in (i.e. not in the PLAYING state)
3292 * Fixed report command output for deities.
3293 * Fixed bug in nuclear damage either taking out submarines when it
3294 shouldn't, or not taking them out when it should.
3295 * Fixed bug in loading units that are carrying units onto other units
3296 (note that it doesn't happen since only HEAVY units can carry other
3297 units and that check works, but that might change some day, and we
3298 don't want units carrying units to be carried by other units, etc. :) )
3299 * Fixed info pages to reflect new sector types.
3300 * Fixed info pages to reflect new spy unit capabilities.
3301 * Fixed show commands to only show trade ships if the TRADESHIPS option
3303 * Fixed build command to only allow building of trade ships if the
3304 TRADESHIPS options is enabled.
3305 * Fixed up some definitions located in many places used for checking
3306 sectors for navigation rights.
3307 * Fixed power.t to correctly describe NEW_POWER formula.
3308 * Made HIDDEN option run time configurable.
3309 * Made LOSE_CONTACT option run time configurable.
3310 * Made ORBIT option run time configurable.
3311 * Made SAIL option run time configurable.
3312 * Made MOB_ACCESS option run time configurable.
3313 * Made FALLOUT option run time configurable.
3314 * Made SLOW_WAR option run time configurable.
3315 * Made SNEAK_ATTACK option run time configurable.
3316 * Made WORLD_X and WORLD_Y run time configurable.
3317 * Made MARKET option run time configurable.
3318 * Made LOANS option run time configurable.
3319 * Made BIG_CITY option run time configurable.
3320 * Made TRADESHIPS option run time configurable.
3321 * Made SHIPNAMES option run time configurable.
3322 * Made DEMANDUPDATE option run time configurable.
3323 * Made UPDATESCHED option run time configurable.
3324 * Made LANDSPIES option run time configurable.
3325 * Made NONUKES option run time configurable.
3326 * Made PLANENAMES option run time configurable.
3327 * Removed SMALL_SERVER stuff (unused baggage)
3328 * Removed trading post sector ('v')
3330 Changes to Empire 4.0.18 - Thu Sep 24 06:54:27 PDT 1998
3331 * Fixed bug in aircombat where planes in flight could intercept air
3332 defense planes and take no damage (i.e. they got to fight twice,
3334 * Fixed bug in freeing memory after performing missions that could crash
3335 the server (it mainly happened after an interdiction mission using
3336 planes and escorts, where some escorts came from airports that didn't have
3337 bombers going up. Freeing the leftover escorts was crashing the server.)
3338 * Fixed bug where you could load non-existant units if you were allied
3340 * Fixed bug where you could pin-bomb a plane with itself.
3341 * Fixed bug where satellites over a bridge may get killed if the bridge
3343 * Fixed bug where land units on a ship in the same sector as a bridge
3344 that is splashed may get sunk.
3345 * Fixed bug where planes on a ship in the same sector as a bridge
3346 that is splashed may get sunk.
3347 * Fixed doconfig with correct empire site text.
3348 * Fixed major problem with abms not firing, and sometimes crashing
3350 * Fixed bug in land units counting up loaded units wrong.
3351 * Fixed doconfig makefile to have doconfig.c as a dependency.
3352 * Fixed bug in resetting commodities (the comm_uid was not being
3354 * Fixed bug in repaying loans not working correctly (the l_uid was not
3355 being properly set.)
3356 * Fixed bug in buying items from the trading block not allowing you
3357 to due to a perceived change in item status.
3358 * Fixed bug in mfir.c where a bogus input to a target could crash
3360 * Fixed bug that after you read telegrams new telegrams may not send
3361 an inform message (the old telegram flags were not cleared.)
3362 * Fixed bug where fort support distance calculations are calculated
3363 twice instead of just once. This bug caused a lower percentage
3364 of support fire than designed.
3365 * Fixed bomb.t to reflect land unit changes.
3366 * Put in some integrity checking for planes returing from bombing runs.
3367 * Added ability to edit land unit that a land unit is loaded on in
3369 * Consolidated bridgefall code into "knockdown" function (this code
3370 existed in at least 3 places, and was different in all of them.)
3371 * Subs returning fire are no longer reported in the news.
3372 * Visitor countries can now use the 'motd' command.
3373 * When trying to use a visitor country, if it is in use, you are not told
3374 by whom, just that it is in use.
3375 * Optimized (slightly) support fire from forts not getting supply and
3376 shells if not needed (out of range)
3377 * Updated Education.t
3378 * Modified (increased) chances of hitting mines slightly.
3379 * Removed unused variables from shp_check_mines.
3381 Changes to Empire 4.0.17 - Fri Jul 31 06:12:21 PDT 1998
3382 * Added ability in edit to change coastal flag for sectors.
3383 * Added ability in edit to edit plague values for ships.
3384 * Added ability for "spy" to report all units/planes not owned by you
3385 that exist in the sector you are spying from.
3386 * Modified naval planes and anti-sub planes.
3387 * Changed so that missiles and bombs that miss their targets cause
3388 collateral damage in the target sector (they have to land somewhere!)
3389 * Changed llook so that non-spy units are required to have at least 1
3390 military personnel on board to see anything.
3391 * Fixed "llookout.t" to reflect change for military requirement.
3394 * Added "lmine" flag for deities to see what sectors have mines in them
3395 (works for sea and land mines, used "lmine" to distinguish it from "min"
3396 which determines mineral (iron) content of a sector.)
3397 * No longer able to pin bomb land units on a ship.
3398 * Land units are required to have at least one military loaded to perform
3400 * Firing land units are required to have at least on military loaded to
3401 be able to fire (or return fire.)
3402 * Spies are not always seen when being pinbombed. You have to look very
3403 carefully for them (as you usually would.)
3404 * Fixed typo in "Spies.t"
3405 * Added new info about spy ability to spy.t.
3406 * Updated tax information in Innards.t and Update-sequence.t
3407 * Fixed typo in fire.t information about units firing on ships.
3408 * Loading military onto land units now resets fortification. (You gotta
3409 re-fortify the new guys.)
3410 * Fixed bug where planes that were mine capable could not drop mines if
3411 they were not cargo capable.
3412 * Fixed bug in potentially crashing in update code for nations tech/research.
3413 * Fixed bug in execute putting you into execute mode incorrectly.
3414 * Fixed bug in board not allowing land units to board from 0 mobility
3416 * Fixed bug where interdicted land units that were missed displayed
3417 a "SPLASH! Bombs miss your ships" message.
3418 * Fixed bug in minesweeping sectors where, even with mobility or
3419 having the sweep ability, ships would get hit by mines for doing
3421 * Fixed bug in count_land_planes always writing out land units unnecessarily.
3422 * Fixed bug in count_planes always writing out ships unnecessarily.
3423 * Fixed bug in lnd_count_units always writing out land units unnecessarily.
3424 * Fixed bug in count_units always writing out ships unnecessarily.
3425 * Fixed bug in llook that reported units on ships.
3426 * Fixed bug in llook that reported satellites launched over the unit.
3427 * Fixed bug in llook that always reported spies (it should be a 10-100%
3429 * Fixed bug in anti possibly not saving lost items correctly.
3430 * Fixed bug in planes getting extended range when on missions and the
3431 op center is not where the plane is located.
3432 * Fixed bug in land unit defensive strength not being based on the eff of
3433 the unit when calculating odds of a battle.
3434 * Fixed bug in board not reporting consistant information.
3435 * Fixed bug in the way land unit casualties were being taken.
3436 * Fixed bug where land units on ships could return fire.
3437 * Fixed bug where land units on other land units could return fire.
3438 * Fixed bug where land units on other land units could fire.
3439 * Fixed bug in attacks/assaults/boardings spreading plague incorrectly.
3440 * Fixed bug in updating plague for ships.
3441 * Fixed bug in updating plague for land units.
3442 * Fixed bug in updating plague for attacking/defending land units.
3443 * Fixed bug where you couldn't pin-bomb land units that were < 20% eff.
3444 * Fixed bug which revealed the owner of torping subs when on a mission.
3446 Changes to Empire 4.0.16 - Fri Jun 12 08:52:06 EDT 1998
3447 * Added patches sent in by Steve McClure, Sverker Wiberg and Curtis
3448 Larsen. They are described with other changes below.
3449 * Fixed bugs in the following commands that allowed two cooperating
3450 countries to create infinite numbers of any commodity and/or cash
3451 at any time (race conditions in the server): build, board, deliver,
3452 designate, distribute, explore, fuel, improve, load, ltend, mobquota,
3453 move, name, order, reset, sail, sell, set, tend, territory, test,
3454 threshold, torpedo, transport, unload
3455 * Fixed bug in board command giving out too much information about a
3456 non-owned sector when it shouldn't be.
3457 * Fixed bug in board command when firing on a sector in defense before
3459 * Fixed bug in rangeedit allowing plane(s) to possibly be stored wrong.
3460 * Fixed bug in launch allowing plane to possibly be stored wrong after
3462 * Fixed bug in lrangeedit allowing land unit(s) to possibly be stored wrong.
3463 * Fixed bug in morale allowing land unit(s) to possibly be stored wrong.
3464 * Fixed bug in arm/disarm allowing a plane to possibly be stored wrong.
3465 * Fixed bug in loan sometimes not writing database correctly.
3466 * Fixed bug in collect.
3467 * Fixed bug in dropping mines from land units.
3468 * Fixed crashing bug in sector_strength routine when oceans take
3470 * Fixed bug in transport possibly decrementing too much mobility when
3472 * Fixed some little warning type messages building with gcc -Wall.
3473 * Fixed problem compiling lwp threads with glibc6 under Linux.
3474 * Changed flash so that players can always flash deities.
3475 * Changed players command to always show deities and visitor countries
3476 that are logged on, and only show allied countries for normal player
3478 * Fixed bug in anti command not stopping sectors when they revolt.
3479 * Fixed bug in set_coastal function not counting bridge spans as
3480 water based sectors (after all, the land is still a coastal sector,
3481 even if next to a bridge span.)
3482 * "flash" and "players" is re-enabled for visitor accounts.
3483 * Fixed bug in bleeding of technology and research to other players.
3484 * Fixed bug in explore not spreading plague correctly.
3485 * Fixed bug in move not spreading plague correctly.
3486 * Fixed bug in deliver not spreading plague correctly.
3487 * Fixed bug in distribute not spreading plague.
3488 * Included "postresults" script in the scripts directory which can be
3489 used to auto-post daily power chart/announcements to rec.games.empire.
3492 * Removed OVCONFIG from build.conf, and patched doconfig to match.
3493 * doconfig is only run if needed
3494 * emp_client and emp_server are only linked if needed
3495 * Added list of disabled options to the version command.
3496 * Fixed bug in survey allowing you to see hidden variables.
3497 * Re-enabled escort missions due to above bug fix most likely the problem.
3498 * Changed one instance of "restrict" to "restricted" in bestpath.c. For
3499 some reason, this was causing a problem on one of the Linux builds (??).
3500 * Added "show sector capabilities" functionality (this didn't exist
3502 * Fixed bug in neweff not reporting stopped sectors. It now (correctly)
3503 reports them as not changing eff.
3505 Changes to Empire 4.0.15 - Wed May 20 12:35:53 EDT 1998
3506 * Fixed the spelling of Markus' name in CHANGES4.0 files.
3507 * Added Markus' patches/fixes. Some are detailed below.
3508 * Added 'mipsultrix.gxx' build target.
3509 * Fixed doconfig to write ipglob.c in the correct target area.
3510 * Fixed a bunch of type casting that needed to be done correctly.
3511 * Only print out last connect by for non-visitor accounts.
3512 * 'players' command is only useable by non-visitor accounts.
3513 * Fixed ask_off in attsub.c to not print out allied sector mil counts
3514 when attacking from neighboring sectors.
3515 * Fixed targetting of che when taking over sectors.
3516 * 'anti' command only fights che that are targetted at you.
3517 * Fixed update not updating timestamps of objects (ships, planes, land
3519 * Fixed bug delivering conquered populace.
3520 * Fixed potential bug scuttling ship with land units on it.
3521 * Moved heavy bombers to tech 90.
3522 * Fixed bug in setsector telling the deity coordinates of sectors being
3524 * Fixed bug in setting budget of enlistment sectors to 0.
3526 Changes to Empire 4.0.14 - Wed Apr 8 08:47:54 EDT 1998
3527 * Fixed time_t problem in common/log.c
3528 * Fixed bug in headlines
3529 * Replaced vaxultrix build flags with proper vanilla ones.
3530 * Fixed bug in update/prepare.c (sometimes not getting charged for
3531 mil on units and ships)
3532 * Fixed bug in printing of "No ship(s)" twice in cargo command when no
3533 ships were selected.
3534 * Temporarily disabled escort missions until a fix is found. They are
3535 randomly crashing the server.
3536 * Fixed morale.t to reflect that retreat percentage is based off of
3537 morale_base and not 75.
3538 * Fixed bug in bridgefall where planes and units on ship in a sector
3539 that has a bridge collapse are being sunk.
3540 * Fixed bug in update/produce.c when a sector overflows it's capacity
3542 * Fixed bug in produce command reporting incorrect costs (sometimes).
3543 * Land units on ships will now try to draw supply from the ship they
3546 Changes to Empire 4.0.13 - Mon Mar 2 11:04:28 EST 1998
3547 * Fixed bug in distribute when world sizes are other than 64x32
3548 * Fixed bug in getcommand (not really a bug, just made it work like
3549 it used to so that the players command is useful for deities
3551 * Fixed building of POSIX threads on Alpha running Digital Unix.
3552 * Fixed line_of_sight prototype in sona.c
3553 * Fixed fairland not to conuse stupid C++ compilers.
3555 Changes to Empire 4.0.12 - Tue Feb 24 11:27:31 EST 1998
3556 * Fixed client build on linux (whoops)
3558 Changes to Empire 4.0.11 - Tue Feb 10 10:53:10 EST 1998
3559 * AIX build seems to only work with gcc right now (but at least that works)
3560 * Vax Ultrix (vaxultrix) build should work now (hopefully) out of the box.
3561 * Took out autosupply of airports when bombing or dropping shells.
3562 (This was the only commodity this was done for, and it was creating
3563 problems since supply is still somewhat broken somewhere)
3564 * Included Curtis Larsen's, Markus Armbruster's and Sverker Wiberg's
3565 submitted patches, which collectively included cleaning up most
3566 of the server prototypes and bogus declarations. Many thanks.
3567 * Increased incoming command buffer to 1024 from 512 bytes
3568 * Increased the # of parsed arguments from 64 to 100
3569 * Fixed bug where spies were not dying when damaged.
3570 * Fixed bug in HIDDEN mods in declare command not printing country # of
3571 uncontacted country correctly (or at all as a matter of fact)
3573 Changes to Empire 4.0.10 - Mon Aug 18 12:34:58 EDT 1997
3574 * Fixed bug where fleets were being interdicted but the damage was being
3575 spread to ships not in the same sectors.
3576 * Fixed but in market when buying goods without enough cash.
3577 * Planes in orbit over airports are no longer fixed up during updates.
3578 * Planes in orbit are no longer damaged when the sectors they are over
3580 * Planes on ships are no longer damaged when the sectors they are in are
3581 damaged, unless the ship is damaged.
3582 * Fixed problem with no newline after partisan activity telegram in
3584 * Fixed problem in chan.c printing out change costs incorrectly.
3585 * Fixed problem in dispatch.c screwing things up on redirection.
3586 * financial should now handle 6 and 7 digit loans.
3587 * Planes on ships that are in sectors that revolt are no longer taken
3589 * Fixed bug in powe.c where the power report was mis-calculating the
3590 efficiency of planes.
3591 * Fixed doconfig.c to use STDC instead of multi-level #ifdefs.
3592 * Fixed bug in parse.c that was screwing up double quotes in conditional
3594 * Military in a sector now only produce up to maxpop, just like civvies
3595 and uw's. No more stuffing 6K mil into a mountain to max it out. You
3596 can still hold more mil there over the updates, but the extras just
3597 won't produce anymore.
3598 * Fixed bug in shark that allowed you to shark up loans even if you couldn't
3600 * Fixed bug in day of week calculation for server up time in common/keyword.c
3601 that is used for gamedays.
3602 * Documented what happens to standing military in collect.t when you collect
3604 * Documented mountains only holding and using 1/10th of the normal sector
3605 population in Sector-types.t.
3606 * Fixed documentation on ship's firing ranges in fire.t to be less
3608 * Updated nukes in nuke.t
3609 * Added apropos command (thanks to Mike Wise)
3610 * Added case-insensitivity to the info command (thanks to Mike Wise). If
3611 there are two files of the same name, and you don't get a complete match,
3612 then whichever file is found first in the directory is used.
3613 * Changed documentation in wantupd.h
3615 Changes to Empire 4.0.9 - Sat Apr 19 23:01:51 EDT 1997
3616 * Fixed dump info pages that were getting formatted funny.
3617 * Fixed improve info page.
3618 * Fixed bug in allied planes/units not moving when the carriers move.
3619 * Fixed bug in satellite output for <100% satellites.
3620 * Fixed bug in load/unload not putting a newline after some unloadings
3622 * Fixed bug in harden not printing correct values.
3623 * Fixed bug in creating/moving/etc. nuclear stockpiles.
3624 * Fixed bug where subs were trying to torp commodities moving on land when
3625 on interdiction. (This was funny ;-) )
3626 * Fixed bug in "move" where you could keep a sector even after someone else
3628 * Budget now correctly reports the # of units being built.
3629 * Mil on units & ships are now reported as normal military costs, not
3630 ship or unit maintainence costs in budget.
3631 * Fixed bug in update code where taxes could potentially be initialized
3632 incorrectly (affected budgets too.)
3633 * Fixed bug in nat.h header so that it uses SCT_MAXDEF instead of a fixed
3634 number (that was incorrect.)
3635 * Fixed bug with trains - they needed the xlight flag to carry planes.
3636 * Revamped and improved flak.
3637 * Added "Flak" info page.
3638 * Added "Fallout" info page.
3639 * Fixed repay/offer/consider to all need a capital to be used.
3640 * Fixed bug with air defense missions not running when not AT WAR. They now
3642 * plane/ship/unit short names are all now 4 characters, padded if needed.
3643 * pdump/sdump/ldump/ndump now just print the short name for the type.
3644 * sdump now has ship name at very end in quotes.
3645 These were done at the request of some client developers for ease of use.
3646 * Fixed extra space in the dump output.
3647 * Fixed fallout - not quite so nasty anymore.
3648 * Fixed fallout - things on ships/units are damaged now.
3649 * Fixed and balanced planes/ships/units/nukes in conjunction with each other.
3650 * Fixed bug in doconfig.c calculating wrong s_p_etu sometimes.
3651 * Fixed bug where harbors weren't being used to resupply.
3652 * Fixed bug where selling units loaded with planes and units wouldn't take
3653 the loaded planes or units - they are now dropped.
3654 * Fixed bug in arm/disarm where you could arm/disarm planes on the trading
3656 * Deities can now remove things from the trading block/market.
3657 * Fixed bug in "work" not charging engineers enough mob.
3658 * Fixed bug in "work" not adding teardown and buildup avail costs together.
3659 * Subs no longer need mobility to return fire when fired upon.
3661 * Fixed bug in "trade" allowing 2 players to pay for the same item, but only
3662 the last player gets it.
3663 * Fixed bug where you couldn't launch missiles from allied ships or sectors.
3664 * Fixed bombing so that pin-bombing can cause collateral damage too.
3665 * Fixed sector damage to damage planes there too.
3666 * Fixed flag in lload so that it doesn't always print if not needed.
3667 * Fixed "sell.t" info page.
3668 * Fixed bug in "buy" where not entering the price correctly could cause
3670 * Fixed "sell" so that at least 1 mobility is required to sell goods. Keeps
3671 the midnight "raid and sell" abuse down. :)
3672 * Fixed "show plane cap" to move the last column over 1 more where it should
3674 * Fixed timestamps to be updated for units/planes on ships/units that move,
3675 since those units/planes move too.
3677 Changes to Empire 4.0.8 - Wed Feb 26 23:00:51 EST 1997
3678 * Fixed bug in nstr_exec that was wiping out the previous conditional.
3679 This was major because it affected timestamp values which are more
3681 * Fixed bug in sdump.c for typo in reporting the trade ships origin.
3683 Changes to Empire 4.0.7 - Mon Feb 24 22:48:54 EST 1997
3684 * Fixed bug in aircombat.c when calculating the air combat odds. Negative
3685 numbers were screwing things up good...
3686 * Fort sector's coordinates are no longer printed when auto-firing at
3688 * Subs can now surface and fire deck guns (again) They can also be
3689 hit by return fire when doing so.
3690 * Fixed bug in setting of plane attack and defensive values so that
3691 negative numbers don't keep going further negative.
3692 * Fixed incorrect military control calculation in the sell command.
3693 * Trading posts are no longer required to sell goods from. You can sell
3694 from harbors and warehouses now too.
3695 * Spy now prints out the owner of land units you see when spying. Before
3696 this was assumed to be sector owner, which is no longer true.
3697 * Loading land units now prints out what was loaded onto each unit,
3698 just as loading ships do.
3699 * Added fallout, coast, c_del, m_del, c_cut and m_cut to dump output.
3700 * Added "GO_RENEW" option. This option means that gold and oil resources
3702 * Added "lost_items_timeout" config variable, and set the default to
3703 48 hours. This determines how long lost items stay in the lost items
3705 * Fixed land unit names to be more consistent.
3706 * Fixed mission.t info page.
3707 * Fixed bug in that if mission_mob_cost was set to 0, even negative
3708 mob units should be able to be put on missions.
3709 * Removed restriction on things needing to be at least 60% to be put
3710 on a mission. Note that while you can put them on missions at < 60%
3711 now, when trying to do the mission, it still checks the eff. This
3712 is to help in automatic setup (build, put on mission, forget) instead
3713 of having to come back repeatedly.
3714 * Spies caught in Neutral or Friendly countries cause the Neutral or
3715 Friendly country to go Hostile towards the owner of the spy.
3716 * Tweaked ammunition numbers for artillery units.
3717 * No more automatic declarations of War should be made. You will go
3718 hostile, but since going to war doesn't increase your countries
3719 defenses, and is purely political, it is left to the player to go
3721 * Fixed bug in trade that wasn't incrementing the time if last second bidding.
3722 * Fixed bug in "lmine" that was crashing the server if the land unit was
3724 * Fixed buy so that if you specify a product, you can only bid on that
3726 * Added "lost.t" info page.
3727 * Added "lost items" database (EF_LOST)
3728 * Fixed bug where you could move in allied forces after an attack if they
3729 bordered the victim area.
3730 * Fixed nstr_comp to deal with values > 16 bits coming in from
3731 client for comparisons.
3732 * Changed last minute market/trade timers to increment 5 minutes. 2 minutes
3734 * Fixed decode in lib/common/nstr_subs.c to deal with NSC_TIME better.
3735 * Commented out the logging of the market checking in server/marketup.c,
3736 lib/commands/buy.c and lib/commands/trad.c It was generating lots of
3737 pretty much useless data that made parsing the server.log file more
3738 more difficult than it needed to be.
3739 * Fixed crashing bug in ldump.
3740 * sdump, ldump, ndump, pdump and dump now print out the current
3741 timestamp on the "DUMP XXX" line.
3742 * Fixed denial of service bug in lib/player/accept.c in
3743 player_find_other function.
3744 * Fixed bug in shark reporting incorrect buyer of the loan.
3745 * Fixed bug in sdump.c (case 0 should have been case 10)
3746 * ldump and sdump now always print the fuel column if asked for,
3747 even if opt_FUEL is turned off. In the case that it is turned
3748 off, the fuel is listed as 0.
3749 * Added "timestamp" field, which is updated every time an item is
3751 * Fixed up the Clients.t info page.
3752 * sdump now prints trade ship building origin.
3753 * sdump now always prints name even if SHIPNAMES isn't defined. If
3754 it is not defined, then the name is empty.
3755 * Added "timestamp" to info/Concepts/Selector.t
3756 * Added some more relevant info to info/Server/Empire4.t
3757 * Fixed Infrastructure.t info page to reflect the fact that infrastructure
3758 is no longer torn down when a sector is re-designated.
3759 * Fixed sell.t to more accurately reflect the time-delay market.
3760 * Fixed read.t and wire.t to reference accept and reject.
3761 * Fixed reject.t not referencing accept command.
3762 * Fixed collect.t to more accurately reflect what goes on when collecting
3764 * Fixed financial.t to reflect defaulted loans.
3765 * Fixed dump.t, sdump.t, ldump.t, ndump.t, pdump.t to reflect new
3767 * Fixed "census.t" (had incorrect reference to "info syntax" instead
3770 Changes to Empire 4.0.6 - Thu Jan 16 11:33 EST 1997
3771 * Increased damage from depthcharges because on increased damage from
3772 torpedos. Sub frange decreased to be more balanced with destroyer frange.
3773 * Intelligence reports (spy) on units will now report the estimated number
3775 * Fixed equation for ship visibility so it will drop as tech increases.
3776 * Added new commands sdump, ldump, pdump, and ndump to dump data on ships,
3777 land units, planes, and nukes.
3778 * If fields are provided, dump will only supply those fields requested.
3779 * Decreased speed of subs.
3780 * When options NO_LCMS or NO_HCMS are set, those commodities are no longer
3781 required for infrastructure improvements.
3782 * Units that lose an assault or a boarding attempt from a ship will no
3783 longer swim back to the ship they came from.
3784 * Units that take extra casualties will no longer lose all their mil at
3786 * Infrastucture is retained when redesignating a sector.
3787 * Dieing spies will no longer crash the server.
3788 * Units, planes, and ships must have mobility to perform missions.
3789 * Units on ship being scrapped are transferred to harbor.
3790 * Food is no longer autoloaded onto units when they are built.
3791 * Fixed show plane stat to show correct range.
3792 * Infantries now take damage at same rate as casualties.
3793 * Fixed bug with hap_fact. Having more happiness now helps with fighting
3795 * Fixed anti to write back target country so che will continue to fight
3797 * Fixed llookout to show correct estimate on number of mil on unit.
3798 * Added buildable architecture "hp". This type will build the server on
3799 a HP/UX machine using the standard compiler instead of gcc.
3801 Changes to Empire 4.0.5 - Thu Dec 12 10:28:48 EST 1996
3802 * Fixed bug in update/distribute.c where pathcost was not being called with
3803 the MOB_ROAD argument (and thus distribution costs could be GREATLY
3804 affected.) - Thanks Ice!
3806 Changes to Empire 4.0.4 - Mon Dec 9 11:00:00 EST 1996
3807 * Fixed Solaris port using gcc.
3808 * Fixed doconfig.c to create directories with right modes.
3809 * Fixed install macros in makefiles to move binaries to the right
3812 Changes to Empire 4.0.3 - Wed Dec 4 22:46:53 EST 1996
3814 * Fixed doconfig.c (put exit(0) at the end of main.)
3815 * Fixed improve.c (moved the prompt[] string outside the fcn.)
3817 Changes to Empire 4.0.2 - Mon Oct 14 12:26:40 EDT 1996
3818 * Put in LND_MINMOBCOST in land.h
3819 * Put in change in lnd_mobcost in lndsub.c
3820 * Put in new nuke costs in nuke.c
3821 * Put in fix so that total work can only be done by the max pop. No more extra
3822 civvies tossed in will do it anymore in human.c.
3823 * Put in fix for src/util/Makefile - beefed it up.
3824 * Put in fix to show where your ship is when it gets shelled in mfir.c.
3825 * Changed infrastructure of roads from .040 to .020 (122 instead of 150 in
3827 * Fixed Update-sequence.t.
3828 * Put in fix for mobcost bonus for 0% highways.
3831 * Spruced up torpedo damage somewhat. :) :)
3832 * Fixed "assault bmap bug" in attsub.c
3833 * Fixed Produce.t (bars cost)
3834 * Changed mountains to get an automatic "2" for defensive bonus in attsub.c
3838 * Fixed "offer" and "consider" not being legal commands in player/empmod.c
3841 * Fixed lstat.c, pstat.c and sstat.c
3842 * Fixed cutoff command in cuto.c
3843 * Fixed attack value in attack_val in lndsub.c
3844 * Fixed lload in commands/load.c
3845 * Fixed defense_val in lndsub.c - Made it a minimum of 1, so that units will
3846 always fight until dead or retreating. 0 makes them get stuck.
3847 * Fixed update/deliver.c - no delivery of non-oldowned civvies (or anything
3848 else for that matter.)
3849 * Fixed llook in commands/look.c
3850 * Fixed che bug in subs/nstr.c
3851 * Fixed bug in strv.c by overcompensating by 1 food per sector (minute amounts
3852 of people would starve.)
3853 * Fixed update/human.c - feed_people rounding problems (I hope.)
3854 * Fixed morale problem in update/land.c
3855 * Fixed count_bodies in attsub.c
3856 * Fixed lnd_mobcost.
3857 * Fixed subs/land,plane,ship.c to handle sunken units and planes correctly.
3858 * Fixed interest rate in commands/offe.c
3859 * Fixed bug in buy.c.
3860 * Put in DEFENSE_INFRA soption o you can turn on/off the use of the defensive
3861 infrastructure. When off, the defensive infrastructure is the same
3862 as the sector efficiency, and you can't improve it. This is OFF by
3866 * Land units are now built with a default reaction radius of 0.
3867 * Changed name of lt artilleries to "lat" from "lart" so you can now build
3869 * Lowered the speed and firing range of pt boats.
3870 * Lowered the initial att strength of cavs from 1.5 to 1.3 (they were TOO
3872 * Changed the max mob gain defaults of units/planes to 1.0 and ships to 1.5
3873 (This is * ETU_RATE, so it is equal to ETU_RATE for units/planes and
3874 1.5 * ETU_RATE for ships.)
3875 * Conquered civvies only pay 1/4 taxes.
3876 * Railways don't get torn down when you rebuild sectors anymore (but roads
3877 and defenses do (if enabled.)
3879 Changes to Empire 4.0.1 - Wed Aug 28 11:35:40 EDT 1996
3880 * Added "extern double tradetax" to check_trade in trad.c
3881 * Improved description of data directory in build.conf
3882 * Fixed bug in attacking land units that retreat so they now get
3883 charged mobility for attacking.
3884 * Fixed dump to report road, rail and defense of a sector at the end.
3885 * Fixed doconfig bug in not checking the right directory to see if the
3886 "data" directory existed or not before trying to create it.
3887 * "change" now works for sanctuary countries.
3888 * Fixed the description of "sinfrastructure".
3889 * Added more info to "Infrastructure".
3890 * Units/planes are no longer reduced to 75% when bought from the trading
3892 * Supply units were slowed down to the speed of infantry units.
3893 * Trade-ship payoffs have been lowered to 2.5, 3.5 and 5.0
3894 * Bars interest is up to $250 per 1K again.
3895 * Civ taxes were raised back up to a 10:1 mil/civ tax ratio (was 20:1)
3896 * Fixed various info pages.
3897 * Fixed bug in people not getting truncated when broke (this was thought
3898 to be fixed, but wasn't. Now it is, dammit!)
3899 * Fixed bug with units marching across oceans (scuba gear not included. ;-) )
3900 * Market/trade taxes and trade ship payoff figures were added to version.
3901 * "cede" has been removed as a default command.
3902 * Makefile rule was fixed for depend build.
3903 * Fixed bug in mapdist not taking world edges into account nicely enough.
3904 * Added a "scuttle" order for autoscuttling trade ships. Makes using them
3905 easier. Cleaned up scuttle code while in there.
3906 * Fixed bug with scuttling a ship with units on it not scuttling the units
3909 Changes to Empire 4.0.0 - Wed Aug 21 1996
3910 * Initial Wolfpack release - Long live the Wolfpack!!!!
3911 * Cleaned up the build environment. Now all that is needed is to edit the
3912 build.conf file, answer the questions there and type "make <arch>" to
3913 build for a specific architecture. Thus, no more reliance on gnumake
3914 or special shell scripts.
3915 * We are now shipping the pre-built info pages with the server for those who
3916 Don't want to build them. You can also still just type "make" and have
3917 the info pages build, but it doesn't completely work (i.e. rebuild new
3918 Subjects) if you don't have perl5 installed.
3919 * Put in the "help" command that does the same thing as "info".
3920 * Removed C_SYNC. This is done for 2 reasons. 1) None of us like it or
3921 wish to support it. 2) We envision a better scheme for doing similar
3922 things will come along.
3923 * Put in MOB_ACCESS - This allows real-time updating of mobility.
3924 * Put in MARKET - This is the time-based market (yes, still teleports,
3925 but it's not as bad as it was.)
3926 * Lots of the documenation has been updated, but there is more to do.
3927 * Added NO_LCMS, NO_HCMS and NO_OIL options. When any of these options are
3928 enabled, you don't need any of that type of material to build things.
3929 If NO_HCMS is enabled, you don't need HCMS to build bridges, you need
3930 lcms. If both NO_HCMS and NO_LCMS are enabled, then you don't need
3931 any materials to build a bridge.
3932 * There is no mobility cost for assigning missions. But, there is also
3933 no longer any benefit for being on a mission either.
3934 * Damage is the same for all commodities (people too.) This means you
3935 can deity shell/bomb sectors again.
3936 * Units are now dependant on tech. What this means is that their statistics
3937 now increase with tech. In addition, there is only 1 type of each basic
3938 unit now (i.e. just "cavalry" instead of "cavalry 1", "cavalry 2", etc.)
3939 This reflects the idea that as you learn more, you learn how to not only
3940 build better units, but you learn to build units better. :) This also
3941 opens the door for a "lupgrade" command along the same lines as the
3942 "upgrade" command for ships.
3943 * Units now have a minimum mob cost for attacking a sector. Marching
3944 mob costs have not changed.
3945 * Starting units have been removed. This means that at the beginning, people
3946 may live a little longer since their neighbor can't come visiting quite
3948 * Shells are no longer required to build units.
3949 * Mil are no longer required to build units.
3950 * Mil are no longer an intrinsic part of a unit. They are now a loadable
3951 commodity. The way a unit's defense/att bonuses work now are
3952 attack = (att * mil * eff)
3953 defense = (def * mil * eff)
3954 In addition, when a unit takes damage, both the eff and the mil go
3955 down. You can quickly toss in new hacks, but you need to wait to repair
3956 the unit at the update. Thus, you can now look at unit's efficiency
3958 * You need at least 1 mil on a unit to march it (spies are the exception.)
3959 * Units always react if in range and they have the mobility, no matter
3960 what their efficency.
3961 * Units may now march anywhere - in your own sectors, deity owned sectors
3962 or allied sectors, with 1 exception, spies. Also, your units can get
3963 trapped if your ally declares non-alliance with you while your units
3964 are still in his country.)
3965 * Units always march at their speed, efficiency doesn't matter.
3966 * LANDSPIES was added - This creates land unit based spies. Spies may march
3967 anywhere, with a chance of getting caught (except in allied territory.)
3968 See "info Spies" for more info on them.
3969 * Planes may now be based out of allied airports. Landing planes on
3970 ships/sectors you do not own no longer changes thier owner. You can only
3971 land on owned/allied sectors/ships, and you may only
3972 fly/bomb/para/recon/drop from owned/allied sectors. So, if a country
3973 you are allied with goes hostile at you, your planes are now stuck there.
3974 Note that if you are using an allied airport, their commodities get
3975 sucked up, not yours (obviously.)
3976 * Planes are now tech-based. Their statistics increase as their tech
3977 increases. Deleted extraneous planes.
3978 * There is a new toggle, "techlists", which allows you to see what you
3979 can build/stats/capabilities sorted by tech instead of groupings.
3980 * Ships are now tech-based. Their statistics increase as their tech
3981 increases. Deleted extraneous ships.
3982 * Che can now be lessened by making happiness. If you have more happiness
3983 than your conquered populace, they don't fight as hard or recruit as
3984 much. If you have less than them, they fight harder and recruit more.
3985 It's not much though - it ranges from 2.0 in your favor to only 0.8
3986 against you (whereas it was always 1.0 before.) So, it definitely
3987 favors the attackers to make lots of happy now.
3988 * Bridgeheads can only be built on coasts.
3989 * Players command was fixed so you only see allies, and don't get
3990 approx #'s of players anymore.
3991 * POSIX threads support has been added.
3992 * The attack bmap bug has been fixed.
3993 * BTUs regenerate 3 times faster now.
3994 * GRAB_THINGS is off by default.
3995 * Big nuclear bombs are back, and FALLOUT has been fixed and enabled
3996 as a default (you couldn't make wasteland before with FALLOUT, now
3998 * You can now deliver military and civilians.
3999 * Added SHIP_DECAY option - off by default (turns off ships decaying out
4000 at sea if not enough mil.)
4001 * The reverting owner bug has been fixed in territory, thresh, dist
4002 and deliver. There are probably more, and when found, will be fixed.
4003 * The "sectors don't starve when stopped or broke" bug has been fixed.
4004 * The "people never get truncated" bug has been fixed.
4005 * Added infrastructure to sectors. What this means is that a sector
4006 can now have it's mobility improved by building both roads and
4007 railways. It also means that a sectors defense is now based on the
4008 defensive infrastructure you build into the sector (no more intrinsic
4009 better defenses based on the sector, you determine which sectors are
4010 defended heavily, and which aren't.)
4011 * The defensive value of a sector no longer relies on the efficiency of
4012 the sector. Instead, it relies on the defensive efficiency of the sector.
4013 Thus, the "production" and "defensive" aspects of sectors have been
4015 * "show sect stats" now shows the maximum defensive value for sectors.
4016 * Changed sector structure to take floats for off/def values so we can use
4017 a base of 1 instead of 2.
4018 * Added "improve" and "sinfrastructure" to support the infrastructure
4020 * Added L_TRAIN units which can only travel along railways. Very fast on
4021 efficient railways, slow on non-efficient ones.
4022 * Added the ability for units to carry other units.
4023 * Fixed census (shortened up "fallout" and "coast" to "fall" and "coa".)
4024 * Forts only cost $500 to build and 100 hcms now (since they don't get any
4025 better defenses automagically.)
4026 * Modified "show sect build" to show the costs for building up the
4027 infrastructure of a sector.
4028 * Changed "spy" and the satellite recon stuff (which shows sector stuff for
4029 spyplanes too) to show the new infrastructure stuff, rounded of course.
4030 * Added Drake's info->html scripts, with some modifications, so you can
4031 now type "make html" and have your info pages built as html files too.
4032 This adds a new directory, "info.html", to the build tree.
4033 * Modified upgrade so that planes and land units may now be upgraded.
4034 * Added pstat command to list the statistics of your planes.
4035 * Added lstat command to list the statistics of your land units.
4036 * Added sstat command to list the statistics of your ships.
4037 * Added nmap command to show a map of your sectors after their new
4038 designations have taken place.
4042 .SA "Clients, Server, Infrastructure, Sectors, LandUnits, Planes, Ships"