+Changes to Empire 4.3.33 - Sun Mar 1 10:10:31 UTC 2015
+ * The add syntax deprecated in 4.3.29 is now gone.
+ * The explore, move, test, transport syntax deprecated in 4.3.27 is
+ now gone.
+ * The bmap flag syntax deprecated in 4.3.27 is now gone.
+ * Stricter configuration validation:
+ - Reject odd WORLD_X instead of making it even silently.
+ - Reject odd WORLD_Y.
+ - Reject missiles that lack capability VTOL instead of adding VTOL
+ silently.
+ - Reject ships that can carry planes, but have neither capability
+ plane nor miss, instead of adding miss silently.
+ * Outlaw ships that can drop depth charges, but not fire. No such
+ ships exist in the stock game. 4.3.31 permitted them, but keeping
+ them working has turned out to be bothersome.
+ * Changes to fire and torpedo:
+ - Don't disclose that the torpedo's path to the target is blocked
+ by land when the target is out of range. Screwed up in 4.2.2.
+ - When a submarine gets hit by return fire after firing its deck
+ gun, the defender again learns the submarine's uid and type, just
+ like for surface ships. This is how it worked before Empire 2.3.
+ - When a submarine gets hit by return fire after launching a
+ torpedo, the defender again learns the submarine's uid. Before
+ Empire 2.3, he learned uid and type.
+ - Print "Kaboom" even when the target is out of range.
+ - Always clear missions when firing guns or dropping depth charges.
+ Screwed up when missions were added in Chainsaw.
+ - Report "Sector X,Y ready to fire" instead of "Sector X,Y firing",
+ because the sector isn't firing, yet, then. Also report ships
+ and land units ready to fire.
+ - Suppress bulletin when player shells or torpedoes his own ship.
+ * When artillery on a bridge span shelled down the supporting bridge
+ head, the bridge fell and the artillery drowned alright. But then
+ the bridge rose right back. Broken in 4.3.14.
+ * Fix board to charge mobility even when defender is less than 100%
+ efficient. Broken in Empire 2.
+ * The convert command charged security land units mobility until
+ 4.3.16 broke that. Drop this undocumented feature instead of
+ fixing it.
+ * Report the owner of ships sunk by return torpedoes instead of POGO.
+ Screwed up when return torpedoes were added in Chainsaw.
+ * Don't disclose uid, type and owner of torpedoed submarines. The
+ latter leaked through the news.
+ * Changes to bomb:
+ - Fix damage to mobility when bombing planes. Has always been
+ broken.
+ - Include position when reporting bombing of a land unit, like we
+ do for ships.
+ - Suppress bulletin when player bombs his own assets.
+ - Report bombing of plane to owner once, not twice.
+ - Don't permit bombing of dead planes. Missed when we did the same
+ for dead ships and land units in 4.3.16.
+ * Changes to retreat and lretreat:
+ - Be less loquacious when changing orders.
+ - Deprecate pseudo-condition 'c'. Use retreat path 'h' to cancel
+ retreat orders.
+ - Change query syntax from "retreat SHIPS" to "retreat SHIPS q".
+ Consistent with mission, and makes prompting for arguments more
+ usable. Keep accepting the old syntax for now, but deprecate it.
+ - Reject invalid retreat paths instead of silently ignoring invalid
+ characters during retreat. Unfortunately, the path needs to be
+ valid even with deprecated pseudo-condition 'c', where it's not
+ actually used. This might break some existing usage.
+ - Fail without charging BTUs when the player gives no conditions.
+ - Fix infinite loop when third argument contains '?'. Broken in
+ 4.3.16.
+ * Rename retreat flag "torped" to "torpedoed" in xdump retreat-flags.
+ This could conceivably break clients. No actual breakage is known.
+ * Rewrite automatic retreat to fix its many bugs and inconsistencies
+ with navigate and march:
+ - When a ship defeats a boarding party, but suffers enough damage
+ to sink, retreat the victim's group (if any) instead of ship#0.
+ - Permit retreat exactly when navigate and march would be
+ permitted. Before, land units happily retreated while on the
+ trading block (forbidden with march since 4.0.9), crewless
+ (likewise since 4.0.0), kidnapped in a foreign sector
+ (inconsistent since land units were added in Chainsaw 3), loaded
+ on a ship (likewise) or a land unit (inconsistent since that
+ became possible in 4.0.0). Ships retreated while on the trading
+ block (forbidden with navigate since 4.0.9).
+ - Land units can now retreat into foreign sectors exactly when they
+ could march there: when the sector is allied, or when the land
+ unit is a spy (with the usual risks).
+ - Land units can now retreat into mountains.
+ - Land unit retreat now resets fortification.
+ - Group retreat now happens only along a single path. Before, you
+ could scatter a group in several directions, and even retreat in
+ far away places. The latter was a highly abusable design flaw.
+ - Bulletins provide more useful information in fewer words. In
+ particular, they always report the end sector.
+ - Fix retreat after a torpedo hit to include the torpedo damage in
+ its mobility cost calculation.
+ - When retreat runs into a sector that cannot be entered, don't
+ consume the retreat direction.
+ - Don't charge mobility for retreating in direction 'h'
+ - You can no longer make your own ships or land units retreat.
+ - Clear mission only when the ship or land unit actually retreats.
+ - Land unit group retreat could corrupt the land unit file or crash
+ the server. Screwed up when Chainsaw added land unit retreat.
+ - Fix ship retreat when helpless. Surface ships claimed to retreat
+ in a bulletin, but that was a lie. Submarines didn't even
+ pretend.
+ * Don't tell the player he sunk a ship when it survives an attack
+ with bomb, fire, launch or torpedo, but sinks during retreat. bomb
+ even reported where it had retreated to when it sank.
+ * Land mine fixes, affecting march and, if option INTERDICT_ATT is
+ enabled, attack and assault:
+ - Fix march sub-command 'm' to not let non-engineers hit mines.
+ Broken in Empire 2. Fixed in 4.0.17 for ships only.
+ - Engineers now risk hitting mines twice instead of once on sector
+ entry, just like minesweepers.
+ - No sweeping with zero mobility. Screwed up when Chainsaw added
+ land units.
+ * Navigate and march cleanup and bug hunt:
+ - Stop on non-fatal mine hits, too. Before, we carried on, and
+ ships that lost all crew were left behind only at the next
+ prompt. Note that we already stop on non-fatal interdiction
+ damage since Empire 2.
+ - Fix use-after-free when a flagship or leader stays behind without
+ a prompt following immediately.
+ - When something other than movement charged mobility, the charge
+ was lost on the next movement, unless there was a prompt in
+ between. For instance, mobility lost to mine hits could come
+ back.
+ - Fix parser not to get confused by white-space.
+ - Make ships use radar always, not just most of the time.
+ - Land units now use radar automatically like ships.
+ - Report flagship and leader changes immediately, and always.
+ Before, they were reported only around a prompt.
+ - Wipe mission and retreat orders less eagerly. Before, they where
+ sometimes wiped even for ships and land units the command
+ rejected.
+ - Give up fortification only when a land unit actually moves or
+ sweeps.
+ - Report where exactly ships and land units sweep mines.
+ - Nicer error messages for sub-command 'm'.
+ - Fix sub-command 'm' not to drop engineers without mobility from
+ the march.
+ - When denying ships entry to an unfriendly sector with canals,
+ don't disclose whether it's above 2%.
+ - Both navigate and march now require all their ships and land
+ units to be in the same sector. Support for scattered ships and
+ land units complicates the code and blows up the test matrix.
+ It's also rather obscure; I suspect accidental use has been more
+ frequent than intentional use.
+ - Check for sector abandonment before anyone marches instead of
+ right before moving the last land unit. Fixes a bug that could
+ scatter the group when something interferes while waiting for the
+ player to confirm abandonment.
+ - When marching a mixed group of spies and non-spies into a
+ non-allied sector, remove non-spies from the group, and move the
+ spies. Before, only the spies before the first non-spy moved
+ into the non-allied sector, which could scatter the group.
+ Screwed up when 4.0.0 added spy units.
+ - Don't permit trains to march out of sectors without rail.
+ - When navigating a mixed group of ships with and without canal
+ capability into a canal, remove incapable ships from the group,
+ and move the capable ships. Before, only the ships before the
+ first incapable ship moved into the canal, which could scatter
+ the group. Broken in 4.3.0.
+ - Fix navigate buffer overrun for impossibly long paths taken. No
+ remotely sane game configuration provides a ship fast enough to
+ trigger it. Broken in 4.0.0.
+ * Remove option SAIL (commands follow, mquota, sail, unsail; ship
+ selectors mquota, path, follow) and autonav (commands order,
+ qorder, sorder; ship selectors xstart, xend, ystart, yend,
+ cargostart, cargoend, amtstart, amtend, autonav) due to multiple
+ issues:
+ - The orders are executed at the update. Crafty players can use
+ them to get around the update window.
+ - Usability is poor, especially for autonav.
+ - Few players use them.
+ - Documentation is inaccurate.
+ - Code has bugs, some of them critical.
+ - It's almost 1300 lines of rather crufty code nobody wants to
+ touch.
+ - Code sharing complicates maintenance of the navigate command.
+ * Configuration tables reader and empdump improvements:
+ - Better error messages.
+ - Export now omits redundant data by default. Use empdump -c to
+ include it.
+ - Import can cope with omitted sectors and realms. Omitted sectors
+ become sea, and omitted realms become empty.
+ - Column order is now unrestricted. Before, some tables required
+ an ID field to come first.
+ - Support splitting any table. Before, tables sect, news, lost,
+ realm, game, infrastructure could not be split.
+ - Support strings longer than 65535 characters.
+ * Fix empdump -i to reject strings that are one character too long.
+ The bug affected ship table columns path, name and rpath, land
+ table column rpath, nat table columns cname, passwd, ip, hostname
+ and userid.
+ * Reject nat selectors relations, contacts and rejects, because they
+ don't actually make sense. They exist just for xdump.
+ * Drop the code to resolve player IP address. It's been disabled
+ since 4.2.13. Deprecate nat selector hostname.
+ * Fix bridge spans next to a bridge tower or head taking damage to
+ fall when they should with EASY_BRIDGES off. Has always been
+ broken.
+ * Fix bridge spans next to a collapsing bridge tower to fall when
+ they should with EASY_BRIDGES on. Broken in 4.3.12.
+ * When you scrap a plane, you get crew back only proportionally to
+ plane efficiency.
+ * Changes to build:
+ - Fail the attempt to build a bridge not next to land or bridge
+ tower more nicely.
+ - Deities can now build anywhere, without materials, work or money.
+ - Building a plane no longer uses at least one military. Military
+ for crew are now rounded just like the other materials. The
+ special case dates back to 4.2.3.
+ - Report missing materials more nicely.
+ - You now need the required materials rounded up to be present.
+ Actual use is still randomly rounded. Before, crafty players
+ could exploit the rounding to save materials, or build
+ sufficiently cheap things without materials. In the stock game,
+ linf and many plane types could be built without materials.
+ * Remove option TREATIES. Usability is very poor, virtually nobody
+ uses them, conditions are incomplete, the code is buggy, and a
+ burden to maintain.
+ * Test suite improvements:
+ - Coverage extended to commands build, navigate, march, fire,
+ torpedo, retreat, lretreat, falling bridges, automatic retreat,
+ command info page completeness, and the empdump utility program.
+ - Maintainability of tests much improved.
+ - Test harness refactoring.
+ Much work remains.
+ * Adjust stack sizes. Stack overflow was possibly for tiny worlds.
+ * Fix start, stop to not operate on dead units when used by a deity.
+ Screwed up when start, stop were extended to units in 4.3.6.
+ * Nukes can be grouped into stockpiles, just like ships can be
+ grouped into fleets. The new command stockpile does for nukes what
+ fleet does for ships. Likewise the new nuke selector stockpile.
+ * wingadd no longer costs BTUs, for consistency with fleetadd and
+ army.
+ * Changes to edit:
+ - Keep missions centered on ship, plane or land unit centered when
+ teleporting it. Screwed up when Chainsaw added missions.
+ - Preserve "does not follow" when copying ships. Preserve "no
+ distribution center" when copying sectors, and don't mess up
+ coastal flag. Screwed when Chainsaw added the means to copy a
+ ship or sector.
+ - You can now edit nukes.
+ - Suppress bulletin on no-op ship, plane, land unit location
+ change. Screwed up in 4.3.32.
+ - You can now edit ship, plane and land unit types.
+ - Changing the owner of a ship, plane or land unit away from POGO
+ now works.
+ * Fix "make uninstall" to remove HTML info pages (which are not
+ installed by default) and directory share/empire/.
+ * Fix "make install" to remove stale formatted info pages.
+ * Code refactoring and cleanup.
+ * Info file fixes and improvements.
+
Changes to Empire 4.3.32 - Sun Aug 25 07:55:34 UTC 2013
* Fix an LWP stack overflow observed on AIX 7.1.
* Fix portability bug in standalone client Makefile
projects / empserver / blobdiff