prod() duplicates the update's sector production code, except it
computes both output with present materials ("make" output) and output
not limited by lack of materials or production backlog ("max" output).
It also rounds materials consumed up instead of randomly.
Factor prod_output() out of produce() for reuse by prod(). prod()
runs it twice: once for "make" output and once for "max" output.
Test output changes are due to random rounding.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
Sector production computes a number of intermediate values, and rounds
many of them. We've tinkered with the rounding a few times. It
currently works as follows.
There are two production efficiencies, both shown by the production
command: sector p.e. (column eff) governs how efficiently work is
converted to units of production, and p.e. (column p.e.) governs how
much product each unit of production yields.
Production is limited by available work, materials and resource
contents. These limits are all rounded down.
Example: if a unit takes 16 work (tech or guns), then 600 work at 100%
sector p.e. can make at most 37 units, rounded down from 600 * 100% /
16 = 37.5. 76 work at 76% sector p.e. can make 3, rounded down from
76 * 76% / 16 = 3.61.
Output is units times p.e. Level output isn't rounded. Item output
is rounded down.
Example: a tech center making 37 units at p.e. 0.6 (edu=20) yields 37
* 0.6 = 22.2 tech (before tech log). 3 units yield 1.8 tech.
Example: a defense plant making 37 units at p.e. 0.6 (tech 35) yields
22 guns (rounded down from 22.2). 3 units yield 1.8g, randomly
rounded.
If item output needs to be adjusted downward (production backlog), the
number of units made is likewise adjusted. It is rounded randomly.
Example: a 100% refinery with 156 work can make 156 units. Its
p.e. at tech 30 is 5.0, so this yields 780p. But if it already has
9500p, it can make only 499 more. That's 99.8 units, rounded randomly
to either 99 or 100.
Materials and money consumed are a multiple of units made. No
rounding there.
Resource depletion depends on units made and is rounded randomly.
Work consumed is units made times work per unit divided by sector
production efficiency. Rounded randomly. Any work left can normally
be used at the next update (it "rolls over").
Example: the tech center making 37 units consumes 37 * 16 / 100% = 592
work, with 8 work left. It also consumes 37d 185o 370l $11100.
Example: the tech center making 3 units consumes 3 * 16 / 76% = 63.2
work, randomly rounded to 63 or 64, with 13 or 12 work left. It also
consumes 3d 15o 30l $900.
Example: the defense plant making 3 units consumes work the same. It
additionally consumes 1o 15l 30h $30 when it makes one gun, and twice
as much when it makes two.
Rounding intermediate values like "units of production" is awkward.
It's better to round only final results. These are item output,
materials consumed, resource depletion and work consumed. Round item
output down, and the rest randomly. Don't round level output (it's a
floating-point value) and money consumed (also floating-point, since
the previous commit).
For item production, this shifts the random variations from number of
products made to materials and work consumed.
Example: the first defense plant again makes 22 guns (now rounded down
from 22.5). The second one now always makes two guns (rounded down
from 3.61 * 0.6 = 2.166) instead of 1.8 randomly rounded.
This is nice, because budget and production can now predict the number
of items made exactly. Before, budget fluctuated randomly just like
the update, and production rounded down.
Note that budget used to be even worse: until commit 6f7c93c
(v4.3.31), we rounded units of production randomly rather than down.
The 100% tech center randomly made 37 or 38 units, which is much more
relevant than random rounding of item output.
Furthermore, work is now fully used both for item and level
production, to the limit permitted by materials and resource contents.
Example: the first tech center now makes 37.5 units, yielding 37.5 *
0.6 = 22.5 tech. It consumes 37.5d 187.5o 375l $11250 and all 600
work (fractions randomly rounded).
Example: the second tech center now makes 3.61 units yielding 1.805
tech, consuming 3.61d 18.05o 36.1l $1083 and all 76 work.
The production command duplicates much of the update's sector
production code, so it needs a matching update. The next commit will
reduce the duplication.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
The update tallies income and expenses in full dollars. Each debit or
credit is rounded before it is added to the tally. Different things
are rounded differently. Examples:
* Each sector's military pay is rounded down. In the stock game, 1m
is paid $4.999998, so n mil cost n*$5 -$1, for all practical n. 10m
in one sector cost $49, but spread over ten sectors they cost only
$40.
* Total pay for military in ships and land units is rounded down.
* Each plane's military pay is rounded down (used to be rounded up
except for broke countries until recent commit 2eb08f4). In the
stock game, flight pay is 5 * $4.999998 = $24.99999. For a plane
with n mil, that's n * $25 - $1. Filed under plane maintenance, not
military payroll.
* Each sector's civilian tax is rounded. In the stock game, 1c pays
$0.499998. 10c in one sector pay $5, but spread over ten sectors
they pay nothing.
* An occupied sector's civilian tax is first rounded, then divided by
four and rounded down *boggle*.
* Each sector's uw tax is rounded. In the stock game, 1u pays
$0.106662. 1-4u in one sector pay nothing. 5-14u pay $1.
This is madness. Has always been that way.
Drop the rounding and track money in type double throughout the
update. Round only the final amount, randomly. This is similar to
how commands accumulate a money delta in player->dolcost.
Likewise, tally the subtotals for budget in type double. Display them
rounded to full dollars.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
The update simply updates each nation's nat_money as it goes. Works.
Except it doesn't update when it runs on behalf of budget. But it
still checks nat_money to determine whether the nation is solvent.
These checks are all broken. Leads to massive mispredictions when
you'd go broke or solvent during a real update.
Track money unconditionally in nat_budget[].money. Delay update of
nat_money until prod_nat(). Replace separate money[] by new
nat_budget[].start_money. Closes bug#235.
Remaining difference between budget and update in the update test:
* #1: budget mispredicts plane #100 gets built (to be fixed)
* #2: budget shows ship, plane and land unit maintenance when broke,
but update damages them instead (correct)
* #2: sector -14,0 converts, quadrupling its taxes (correct)
* #4 & #5: bank with dust and bars taken over by che (correct)
* #4: plague deaths (correct)
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
Extend struct budget member bm[] to cover ships, planes and land
units, too.
Plane maintenance changes because pilot pay is now consistently
rounded down. Before it was rounded down for broke countries, else
up. The stock game's pilots earn a little less than $25, and solvent
countries save $1 per plane. The rounding doesn't make much sense
either way. To be be addressed in a later commit.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
When we add up military payroll, we discard fractions. Payroll is
therefore lower than it should be, but I'm not fixing that now. The
number of military budget reports is actually computed from payroll,
and therefore also low.
The obvious way to fix that would be adding another out parameter to
tax() and upd_slmilcosts(). However, budget and the update track cost
and count of numerous things (sector products, unit maintenance and
building, ...), and it's time for a common way to do that.
Create struct budget_item for tracking cost and count, and struct
budget nat_budget[MAXNOC] for tracking a nation's budget. Track only
military for now; more to follow.
This fixes the military count. The cost of military remains low,
because we discard fractions exactly as before.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
People don't work when their sector is stopped or their nation is
broke. Implemented by produce_sect() skipping the assignment of new
work returned by do_feed() to sct_avail.
This is wrong because it lets all old work roll over, ignoring
rollover_avail_max.
Broken in 4.0.0. Similarly broken for sectors disabled via zero
budget priority between a botched fix for changing sector types in
Chainsaw and the removal of budget priorities in commit 520446e,
v4.3.6.
Fix by zapping available work when the sector is stopped or its owner
is broke.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
Traditionally, unused unused available work is discarded at the
update. Since commit d7a054c (v4.2.13), deities can configure (some)
unused work to "roll over", i.e. available work = some unused work +
this update's work.
Not discarding unused work reduces micromanagement incentives.
However, it also leads to unobvious behavior.
For instance, here's the obvious way to build a radar station: move in
enough people to make 200 work. Half of it is available for sector
building, and increases efficiency to 100%. Here's a not-so-obvious
way: move in enough people to make 134 work. 67 will be used to
increase efficiency to 67%. Now move your workers elsewhere. The
unused available work is enough to finish the job at the next update.
Similarly, neighbors could be surprised by sectors building bridges
despite having no visible workers.
Commit 7f4e59f (v4.2.15) let deities limit the amount rolled over:
unused work above rollover_avail_max is discarded. This became the
default with a value of 50 in commit 81a3e4c4, v4.3.31.
Limit it further so that "roll over" can increase the update's work by
no more than half, plus one. The extra point is there so that even a
tiny work force has a chance to eventually eke out the second point of
work needed to increase efficiency.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
Rounding work down can lead to a bit of work micromanagement. For
instance, four military on a lonely island accomplish nothing in 60
ETU updates, but five will make one point of work per update. They
can build a 2% harbor in four updates, as long as rollover_avail_max
is at least 3. Six to eight will be no faster.
The people's work used to be rounded randomly until Empire 3's big
effort to make the update code work for budget switched to rounding it
down, perhaps accidentally.
Switch back to rounding randomly, so that players don't have to get it
exactly right. Four military now get to 2% in five updates on
average, five in four, six or seven in three, and so forth.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
buildeff() rounds work and money up. Until recently, fractions could
only occur on tear-down, but with customized costs they can now also
occur on build-up.
The previous commit changed unit building to round money and work
randomly. Before, money was rounded down, and work was rounded up.
Round them randomly for sectors as well, for consistency.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
shiprepair() limits the efficiency gain to how much the workers can
build, rounding randomly. It charges work, money and materials for
the efficiency actually gained, rounding work up, money down, and
materials randomly. Same for planerepair() and landrepair(). Has
always been that way.
If you get lucky with the random rounding, you may get a bit of extra
work done for free.
The budget command runs the update code, and can be off by one due to
different random rounding.
Sector production used to have the same issue, only more serious,
because a single unit of tech production matters much more for the
budget than a single point of unit efficiency gain. I fixed it in
commit 6f7c93c, v4.3.31.
Fix it for unit building the same way: limit efficiency gain to the
amount the workers can produce (no rounding). Work becomes a hard
limit, not subject to random fluctuations. Randomly round work and
money charged for actual gain, like we do for materials. On average,
this charges exactly the work and money that's used.
This lets budget predict how much gets built a bit more accurately.
It's still not exact, as the amount of work available for building
remains slightly random, and the build cost is randomly rounded.
The old rounding of work for ships carries the comment "I didn't use
roundavg here, because I want to penalize the player with a large
number of ships." Likewise for planes. Rounding work up rather than
randomly increases the work cost by 0.5 per ship, plane or land unit
on average. I could keep the penalty by adding 0.5 before random
rounding. Not worth it, since the effect is actually pretty trivial.
Let's examine a fairly extreme case: an airfield with 600 available
work repairing a huge number of lightly damaged planes, say f2 with
81% average efficiency. The old code lets the airfield repair roughly
600 / 6.5 = ~92 planes, the new code 600 / 6 = 100.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
Replace the term
power value of materials and cost + 9
by
power value of materials and cost + maximum population / 1000 * 8 + 1
The value of ordinary sectors (maximum population 1000) doesn't
change. The stock game's mountains, plains and bridges are now worth
only 28% as much.
This concludes my tweaking of the power factor for now. I tested it
with data from a real game (Hvy Metal II). The effect is small: #5
overtakes #4, and the lead of #1 over #2 and #3 shrinks some. Closer
analysis finds the following reasons. The game had very expensive big
cities. Valuing them correctly gives countries with many cities a
noticeable boost. Planes are worth less than before, but the
difference is much larger for cheap planes. Big piles of construction
materials are worth much less, and shells, guns and bars are worth
more.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
Building sectors can make you rate *lower* on the power chart, because
the power factor treats all sectors the same, regardless of build
materials and cost.
To avoid that, replace the term
efficiency / 10.0
by
(power value of materials + power value of cost + 9)
* efficiency/100.0
The value of ordinary sectors, which take no materials and cost $100,
doesn't change. The stock game's fortress is now worth 80% more due
to its materials and higher cost. The stock game's wilderness is
worth 10% less, because it costs nothing.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
Update code shared with budget uses the bp map instead of the sector,
so that budget can track materials and work available in sectors for
ship, plane and land unit building without updating the sector file.
Unfortunately, the bp map can become stale during the update.
prepare_sects() doesn't update the bp map for sea sectors, unlike
budget's calc_all(). Instead, we rely on calloc()'s initialization.
Works, but is a bit unclean.
prepare_sects() updates the bp map after fallout, but neglects to
update it for any of the later sector updates (steps 1b to 1f in info
Update-sequence). Che can destroy materials and available work, and
the plague can kill military. The bp map stays out of date until
produce_sect() updates it again.
Since we deal with sector production and countries in increasing order
of country number, foreign ships, planes and land units owned by
countries with lesser numbers get built before their sector produces.
Building uses the stale bp map then, and can use materials and
available work destroyed by che or the plague. The update test
demonstrates the former case.
For stopped sectors or when the owner is broke, produce_sect() updates
only materials in the bp map, not available work. Nothing builds in a
stopped sector, but allies may build in your sectors even when you're
broke. They can use available work destroyed by che then.
Screwed up when Empire 3 made the update code work for budget.
Note that budget bypasses the flawed code: it prepares its bp map
itself instead of calling prepare_sects().
Rather than fixing prepare_sects(), use a null bp map for the update:
writes become no-ops, and reads read from the underlying sector. Not
only does this remove the possibility of the bp map going stale during
the update, it saves a bit of memory, too.
calloc()'s initialization is now dead. Switch to malloc().
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
produce_sect() skips sectors without civilians, military and land
units. These are unowned. Any uw there are frozen in time: they
don't eat, procreate or produce. Has always been broken. Don't skip
such sectors.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
When the required level is too low for production, produce() returns
early. Except when simulating. Messed up when Empire 3 made the
update code work for budget.
This can make budget show level production even when it's not actually
possible. In the stock game, this can happen for tech and research,
which require education > 5.0.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
prepare_sects() caches the sector owner's getnatp() across
guerrilla(), do_plague() and populace(). This is wrong, because the
owner may change. The mistake can be traced back all the way back to
BSD Empire 1.1.
If the sector revolts or reverts to deity, the ex-owner still receives
taxes and bank interest. The update test demonstrates this bug.
If the sector revolts, we use the ex-owner's instead of the owner's
tech and research for plague, and we use the ex-owners happiness and
required happiness instead of the owner's for loyalty update and civil
unrest.
Change do_plague() and populace() to call getnatp() themselves. Call
it in prepare_sects() only after we're done messing with the sector
owner.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
We maintain a few sector invariants in sct_prewrite(). Since the
update bypasses sct_prewrite(), it needs to maintain them itself. The
two should be consistent.
The update reverts deserted sectors to deity in three places:
do_plague(), populace() and produce_sect(). None of them is
consistent with sct_prewrite().
populace() can revert unowned sectors to deity. This creates bogus
entries in the "lost" file. Harmless; messed up when the lost items
were added in 4.0.7. Visible in tests/smoke/final.xdump.
populace() fails to revert when there are only uw left. If PLAGUE is
enabled, do_plague() already reverted. Else, produce_sect() will.
This is the only case where they add value to populace(). Can be
traced back all the way to BSD Empire 1.1.
All three neglect to clear mobility. Harmless.
Fix populace()'s condition for reverting to deity, and make it clear
mobility. Drop the reverting from do_plague() and produce_sect().
populace() also resets state that applies to civilians when there are
none: work percentage, loyalty and old owner. However, it resets on
different conditions than sct_prewrite(). Messed up in Chainsaw;
before, populace() didn't reset at all.
For sectors without military, populace() fails to reset. This can
happen when the update wipes out civilians and military, say by plague
or fallout. The now bogus work percentage, loyalty and old owner
persist until sct_prewrite() runs on the next non-update sector
update. Except old owner is reset correctly by populace() when the
sector reverts to deity. It doesn't when the owner has a land unit
there.
Most of the time, this doesn't matter, as moving civilians into a
sector without civilians overwrites the sector's work percentage,
loyalty and old owner. However, airlifting and unloading civilians
fail when the old owner differs from the owner. Else they adopt the
sector's loyalty and work percentage (bug#49 and bug#255).
Fix populace() to reset any sector without civilians, like
sct_prewrite().
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
newe() and prod() duplicate parts of the update's do_feed(), except
they round babies down instead of randomly, to get a stable,
conservative forecast. Unlike the update, they assume sufficient
food. Inaccurate for sectors that are going to starve or have
suboptimal population growth. Not documented. Has always been that
way.
Eliminate the undocumented assumption by replacing the duplicate code
by a call of do_feed(). Add a suitable parameter to do_feed() to
preserve the different rounding.
The update test shows the improvement.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
Since changing *sp is safe now, we can update sp->sct_work,
sp->sct_loyal, sp->sct-che unconditionally in do_feed(), and likewise
sp->sct_item and sp's resource in produce().
Output of budget in smoke test and update test changes slightly,
because it now executes more code, and the PRNs this consumes affect
random rounding.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
In Empire, even babies work.
neweff and production compute the projected population's work,
discarding fractions.
The update first computes the adults' work (discarding fractions),
then newborns' work (discarding fractions), then adds them together.
Double rounding. Moreover, it uses the old work percentage for the
adults' work, and the new one for the newborns' work. Broken in
Empire 3.
Fix by recomputing work after grow_people(). This is how things
worked before the regression. Also restores a bug: growfood()'s work
use is ignored. Harmless, because fcrate and fgrate are too low for
growfood() to produce anything, and nobody customizes them. Mark
FIXME anyway.
Update test output changes as expected: available work differs in
sectors where double rounding discards work, an in sectors with
changing work percentage.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
Civilians, military and uw work only up to their sector's population
limit. The population limit depends on the sector type's maximum
population, research if RES_POP is enabled, and the sector's
efficiency for big cities.
The population limit may decrease between computation of work in
do_feed() and the end of the update:
* Research declines (only relevant with RES_POP). Work is not
corrected. The declined research will apply at the next update.
Since levels age after production is done, any work corrections
could only affect leftover available work. Wouldn't make sense.
The effect is negligible anyway. Even with an insanely fast decline
of 60% (level_age_rate = 1, etu_per_update = 60), the population
limit decreases by less than 10% in the worst case.
* upd_buildeff() changes sector type and efficiency. Work is
corrected only when this changes the sector type from big city to
not big city.
It isn't corrected on other sector type changes. These can affect
maximum population since the sector type's maximum became
configurable in commit 153527a (v4.2.20). Sane configurations don't
let players redesignate sectors to a type with different maximum
population. The server doesn't enforce this, though.
It isn't corrected when a big city's efficiency decreases, but
sector type change isn't achieved. Harmless, because tearing down a
city takes very little work (25 for 100%), so efficiency decrease
without type change means the work we have must be safely below any
sane population limit's work.
Good enough. However, the code implementing the work correction for
big cities is unclean. Get rid of it by tweaking the rules: a big
city's extra population does not work. City slickers, tsk, tsk, tsk.
At least they still pay their taxes.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
Tests need repeatable pseudo-random numbers to yield repeatable
results. Commit 73f1ac8 (v4.3.33) reseeds the PRNG with the count of
commands right before executing a command when running_test_suite is
on. This doesn't help the update: whenever update code exercised by a
test is changed to consume fewer or more PRNs, all subsequent users
get different numbers regardless. The ensuing test result changes are
extremely tedious to review.
To address this problem, reseed the PRNG in the update's two most
important loops with the iteration count when running_test_suite.
This way, the effect of perturbing the PRN sequence lasts only until
the next iteration.
There are many more loops, but reseeding in all of them seems
impractical.
Perturbs test results across the board. Hopefully, that'll happen
less frequently now.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
Items, ships, planes and land units all contribute to the power
factor, which determines position on the power chart.
Items are worth
amount * item value * (0.5 + nation tech level / 1000.0)
The item values aren't quite right: producing stuff can *hurt* your
position on the power chart. Food, uw and rads are worth nothng.
Reduce the value of oil, and give rads the same value as oil. Tweak
value of iron and oil products so that production's power change is
roughly zero around p.e. 0.9 (tech 110), except for construction
materials, where it's zero at p.e. 0.5 (tech 0). Construction
materials become less valuable, shells, guns and petrol become more
valuable. Increase value of bars to roughly match the other changes.
It may still be too low. Halve the value of civilians, and give the
other half to uw. Results:
old new change
civ 100 50 / 2
mil 100 100
shell 80 125 * 1.5625
gun 400 950 * 2.375
pet 2 7 * 3.5
iron 10 10
dust 200 200
bar 1000 2500 * 2.5
food 0 0
oil 100 50 / 2
lcm 100 20 / 5
hcm 200 40 / 5
uw 0 50 new
rad 0 50 new
Ships, planes and land units are worth
base value * effic/100.0 * (0.5 + unit tech level / 1000.0)
For ships and land units, the base value is
lcm/5.0 + hcm/5.0
Build cost is ignored, but lcms are valued twice as much "loose" ones
(before this commit). Therefore, building stuff can change your
position on the power chart in both directions, depending on the type
of build.
For planes, the base value is
20 * (0.5 + nation tech level / 1000.0)
Build cost and materials are ignored, and tech is squared. This
is plainly absurd.
Unify to
(power value of money and materials to build) * effic/100.0
This formula is chosen so that building stuff doesn't change your
power factor. Bonus: it doesn't assume anything about possible build
materials.
For ships and land units, factoring in build cost overcompensates the
discounted value of construction materials more often than not.
Noteworthy changes for the stock game:
ship type old new change
ss slave ship 20 5.8 * 0.29 largest decrease
cs cargo ship 20 7.8 * 0.39
ts trade ship 60 25.5 * 0.42
frg frigate 12 7.8 * 0.65
bb battleship 24 21.8 * 0.91
cal light carrier 22 30.4 * 1.38
can nuc carrier 30 84.6 * 2.82 largest increase
land unit type old new change
hat hvy artillery 12 9.6 * 0.8 largest decrease
linf light infantry 2.4 3.32 * 1.38
cav cavalry 3 5.4 * 1.8
inf infantry 3 5.4 * 1.8
lar lt armor 3 6.4 * 2.13
com commando 3 15.4 * 5.13
eng engineer 3 30.4 * 10.13
meng mech engineer 3 45.4 * 15.13 largest increase
For planes, the power value change depends on the type. Below a
certain nation tech level, planes of this type become more valuable,
above less.
For the stock game, planes costing at most $1000 become less valuable
at any nation tech level that can build them, and planes costing at
least $1800 become more valuable at any practical tech level,
i.e. under 400. Noteworthy planes:
plane type new
sam Sea Sparrow 2.1 least valuable
f2 P-51 Mustang 4.34
lb TBD-1 Devastator 5.92
jf1 F-4 Phantom 10.6
tr C-56 Lodestar 10.78
jt C-141 Starlifter 15.86
jhb B-52 Strato-Fortress 33.54
ss KH-7 spysat 41.2 most valuable
The old value is a flat 12 at nation tech level 100, 15 at tech level
250, and 18 at tech level 400.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
Actual abilities of ships, planes and land units depend almost
completely on the individual unit's tech, not the nation's tech. The
power factor should reflect that.
The power value of a unit is of the form
base value * (20 + nation's tech level) / 500
Change it to
base value * (20 + unit's tech level) / 500
Note that a plane's base value still depends on the nation's tech
level. This commit merely makes the absurdity stand out a bit more.
To be fixed later.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
In the old times, power didn't consider tech at all. Chainsaw's
option NEWPOWER (mandatory since v4.2.14, on by default before)
changed this dramatically: the power factor gets multiplied by
max(1, tech) / 500.
In the early game, small absolute tech differences yield large power
factor differences. For instance, if country A has tech level 10, and
B has 5, then A gets a factor two boost.
As the game progresses, tech differences between viable countries tend
to grow, but only slowly. The influence on power diminishes. For
instance, if C has tech level 270 and D has 240 (quite a respectable
tech lead), then C gets a modest 1.125x boost over D.
Change the factor to (20 + tech) / 500. Now A's advantage is only
1.2, and C's is 1.115.
You might think that's rather low. However, tech is not power unless
you project it, and then it manifests itself as sectors, population
and other stuff power counts.
The same tech term occurs in plane power, except with just tech
instead of max(1, tech) . Change it there as well, for consistency.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
Notable gaps in its coverage are fallout, most of guerrilla, delivery,
distribution, ALL_BLEED and LOSE_CONTACT.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
