.SY claims all arguments are individually optional. Fix that, and
clarify that omitting the optional arguments shows current orders.
Don't complicate syntax with <SECTS>, <SHIP/FLEET> covers sectors.
The two pages are identical apart from header and footer. They
mention land units briefly, then explain ship retreat. Lazy. Drop
the land unit mention from "info retreat", and rewrite "info lretreat"
for land units.
Update example output for current code.
Don't shout retreat conditions. We've always accepted both lower and
upper case conditions. Help has been advertising lower case since
commit bb5dfd8, v4.3.16.
While there, fix a few misspellings and such.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
Commit 18ee9a2f (v4.2.21) and commit 18ee9a2f (v4.3.16) updated only
info/retreat.t, and missed info/lretreat.t.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
Documented in commit dc41544, v4.3.16. It actually worked only at the
condition prompt then. No longer recognized elsewhere since commit
c699949. The documentation is now misleading. Simply drop it; the
prompt points out how to get help,
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
It's not 100 flat, it's 20 per interdicted land unit. It's been that
way since Empire 2 at least.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
Don't claim the lowest-numbered land unit is always the leader.
Reword the explanation of the prompt.
Update example output for current code.
Clarify that a destination sector is also accepted interactively, not
just on the command line.
Missiles interdict just the valuable ships, unlike other interdiction.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
Don't claim the army stops when the leader stops.
Don't claim the lowest-numbered land unit is always the leader.
The prompt shows minimum mobility, not leader mobility.
Clarify that a destination sector is also accepted interactively, not
just on the command line. Fix the example output, and update for
current code.
Replace incorrect landmine hit chance formula by a reference to "info
Hitchance".
Drop incorrect damage limit for missile interdiction, rely on the
reference to "info mission" instead.
The hit chance of missiles and pin-bombers interdicting land units is
not 100%, but depends on the marching land unit that is easiest to hit.
Clarify that interdiction damage is spread evenly among the marching
land units.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
The capability to navigate ships spread over several sectors is
obscure and rarely useful. Accidental use is probably more frequent
than intentional use. Issues:
* Interactive prompts show only the flagship's position, and give no
clue that some ships are actually elsewhere.
* Path finding is supported only when all navigating ships are in
the same sector.
* Interdiction becomes rather complex. For each movement, every
sector entered is interdicted independently. This means the same
fort, ship, land unit or plane can interdict multiple times.
Interdiction order depends on the order the code examines
ships. which the player can control. This is all pretty much
undocumented.
* Complicates the code and its maintenance. Multiplies the number of
test cases needed to cover navigate.
I feel we're better off without this feature.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
The capability to march land units spread over several sectors is
obscure and rarely useful. Accidental use is probably more frequent
than intentional use. Issues:
* Interactive prompts show only the leader's position, and give no
clue that some land units are actually elsewhere.
* Path finding is supported only when all marching land units are in
the same sector.
* In each step, the bmap is updated for the leader's radar. The bmap
is not updated around other marching land units. Already odd when
all units are in the leader's sector, and odder still when some are
elsewhere.
* Interdiction becomes rather complex. For each movement, every
sector entered is interdicted independently. This means the same
ship, land unit or plane can interdict multiple times. Interdiction
order depends on the order the code examines land units. which the
player can control. This is all pretty much undocumented.
* Complicates the code and its maintenance. Multiplies the number of
test cases needed to cover march.
I feel we're better off without this feature.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
SAIL has issues:
* Sail orders are executed at the update. Crafty players can use them
to get around the update window.
* The route is fixed at command time. You can't let the update find
the best route, like it does for distribution.
* The info pages documenting it amount to almost 100 non-blank lines
formatted. They claim you can follow friendly ships. This is
wrong. They also show incorrect follow syntax. Unlikely to be the
only errors.
* Few players use it. Makes it a nice hidey-hole for bugs. Here are
two nice ones:
- If follow's second argument is negative, the code attempts to
follow an uninitialized ship. Could well be a remote hole.
- If ship #1 follows #2 follows #3 follows #2, the update goes into
an infinite loop.
* It's more than 500 lines of rather crufty code nobody wants to
touch. Thanks to a big effort in Empire 2, it shares some code with
the navigation command. It still duplicates other navigation code.
The sharing complicates fixing the bugs demonstrated by
navi-march-test.
Reviewing, fixing and testing this mess isn't worth the opportunity
cost. Remove it instead. Drop commands follow, mquota, sail and
unsail. Drop ship selectors mquota, path, follow.
struct shpstr shrinks some more, on my system from 160 to 120 bytes.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
The autonavigation feature has issues:
* Autonavigation orders are executed at the update. Crafty players
can use them to get around the update window.
* Usability is poor:
- The order command is overly complex, not least because it can do
five different things: clear, suspend, resume, declare route, set
cargo levels.
- Unlike every other command involving movement, order does not let
you specify routes, only destination sectors.
- Setting cargo levels can silently swap start and end point of a
circular route, because "this keeps the load_it() procedure
happy". Maybe it does, but it surely keeps players confused.
- Setting "start" cargo levels actually sets the "end" levels, and
vice versa. Has always been broken that way.
- Predicting what exactly autonavigation will do at the update isn't
easy.
* The info pages documenting it amount to almost 400 non-blank lines
formatted. They claim only merchant ships can be given orders.
This is wrong. Unlikely to be the only error.
* Few players use it, and its workings at the update a fairly opaque.
Makes it a nice hidey-hole for bugs. Here are two:
- Unlike the scuttle command, autonavigation happily scuttles trade
ships while they're on the trading block.
- Unlike the load command, autonavigation can load in friendly and
allied sectors.
* It's more than 700 lines of rather crufty code nobody wants to
touch. Thanks to a big effort in Empire 2, it shares code with the
navigation command. It still duplicates load code. The sharing
complicates fixing the bugs demonstrated by navi-march-test.
Reviewing, fixing and testing this mess isn't worth the opportunity
cost. Remove it instead. Drop commands order, qorder and sorder.
Drop ship selectors xstart, xend, ystart, yend, cargostart, cargoend,
amtstart, amtend, autonav.
xdump ship sheds almost half its columns. struct shpstr shrinks, on
my system from 200 to 160 bytes.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
TREATIES has issues:
* Treaties can cover attack, assault, paradrop, board, lboard, fire,
build (s|p|l|n) and enlist, but not bomb, launch, torpedo and
enlistment centers.
* Usability is very poor. While a treaty is in effect, every player
action that violates a treaty condition triggers a prompt like this:
This action is in contravention of treaty #0 (with Curmudgeon)
Do you wish to go ahead anyway? [yn]
If you decline, the action is not executed. If you accept, it is.
In both cases, your decision is reported in the news.
You cannot get rid of these prompts until the treaty expires.
* Virtually nobody uses them.
* Virtually unused code is buggy code. There is at least one race
condition: multifire() reads the firing sector, ship or land unit
before the treaty prompt, and writes it back after, triggering a
generation oops. Any updates made by other threads while trechk()
waits for input are wiped out, triggering a seqno mismatch oops.
* The treaty prompts could confuse smart clients that aren't prepared
for them. WinACE isn't, but is reported to work anyway at least
common usage. Ron Koenderink (the WinACE maintainer) suspects there
could be a few situations where it will fail.
This feature is not earning its keep. Remove it. Drop command
treaty, consider treaty, offer treaty, xdump treaty, reject treaties.
Output of accept changed, obviously.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
Breaking sanctuary turns 100% sanctuaries into capitals, all others
into highways. Before Empire 3, sanctuaries always became capitals.
Give deities more control over initial state of countries than
choosing between 100% capital and <100% highway sectors: turn
sanctuaries into their new designation on break. Except make a
capital when the new designation is sanctuary (which it normally is).
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
"info setsector" claims you "can change anything that appears in dump
or peek (I think)", which has always been wrong.
edit is much more complete. However, edit used to be more limited in
that it could change only one sector. For mass-changes, you had to
use setsector and setresource. Since that limitation is gone, there's
no real use left for setsector and setresource.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
Accept general <SECTS|SHIPS|PLANES|LANDS|NATS> argument instead of
just <SECT|SHIP|PLANE|LAND|NAT>.
edit with <KEY> <VALUE>... arguments applies the arguments to all
selected objects. Without such arguments, edit lets you edit the
selected objects interactively one after the other.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
Also end URIs with '/' where appropriate.
Refrain from touching scripts/ and Stephen Crane's LWP authorship
note.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
Combine the two loops looking for \*QNAME\*U and "info NAME" into one.
Recognize "info NAME" only with the closing '"' to be present.
No change with current info sources.
"Unusually long" topics are marked with a "!" in subject indexes.
This should use the line count of the formatted page, but that's too
much trouble, so commit 4c0b4c0 (v4.3.27) approximated it by "source
file has more than 9999 bytes". Change that to "source file has more
than 300 lines".
Since subjects were added in Empire 2, we've always picked them up
from .SA requests. If you mistype a subject there, you get a "is a
NEW subject" warning, and incorrect subject pages. When building a
pristine tree, you get bogus "is a NEW subject" warnings for all
subjects. If you somehow delete the generated subjects.mk, but not
the generated subject files, the build breaks.
Declare subjects in Make variable subjects. Drop generated makefile
subject.mk.
Treat unknown topics in .SA arguments as errors. This replaces the
"$subj is a NEW subject" warning.
Treat subjects without member pages as errors. This replaces the "The
subject $subj has been removed" warning.
Safer and simpler.
We used to do all the info indexing work in info.pl: find subjects,
create subjects.mk (to tell make the list of subjects), the subject
pages, and TOP.t. Worked, but touching an info page triggered a full
rebuild of all subject pages and TOP.t.
Commit 2f14064 (v4.3.0) tried to avoid that by splitting info.pl into
findsubj.pl, mksubj.pl, mktop.pl. findsubj.pl puts not just the
subjects into subjects.mk, but also make rules for the subject pages,
to guide their remaking. mksubj.pl creates a single subject page.
mktop.pl creates TOP.t.
Unfortunately, this doesn't work so well. Since subjects.mk doesn't
exist in a virgin tree, we use -include. Unwanted consequence:
findsubj.pl failure doesn't stop make. Moreover, the complex make
machinery breaks down when info sources get removed or subjects get
dropped.
Go back to the old method, except keep mktop.pl separate, as that part
works just fine, and use simpler make rules. mksubj.pl now creates
subjects.mk and all subject pages, like info.pl did.
This effectively reverts most of commit 2f14064. I'll address the
excessive rebuilding of subject pages in a different way shortly.
Mark obsolete pages with '+' in subject pages. Drop the separate
"Obsolete" subject page: move "info Innards" to subject "Server", and
"info update" to "Updates" (where it came from in commit a5764534,
v4.3.10).
