Sectors, ships, planes and land units are always visited in the same
order, but it doesn't hurt to be explicit.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
People in sectors get plagued, then taxed or paid, then fed. People
on ships and land units get paid, then fed, then plagued. Sectors
were messed up when Empire 3 made the update code work for budget.
Change sectors back to how they worked before Empire 3: move do_feed()
from produce_sect() to prepare_sects(), and delay do_plague() until
after do_feed(). People in sectors now get taxed, paid and fed even
when they die of the plague, just like they do on ships and land
units.
Because do_plague() now runs after populace(), the latter's handling
of people dying off doesn't cover plague anymore. Delay it to the
very end of prepare_sects().
Additionally, move feeding and plaguing from upd_ship(), upd_land() to
prep_ship(), prep_land(), for consistency with sectors.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
Ship, plane and land unit repairs depend on and change the state of
the sector. To predict repairs, we need to predict the state of the
sector before repairs. The obvious way to do that is to simulate the
sector update and all ship, plane and land unit updates there in the
correct order.
Until recently, we simulated only own sectors, ships, planes and land
units. Wrong when foreign sectors, ships, planes or land units are
involved. The fix (commit 70f6964) makes budget simulate all
countries. Correct, but does much more work than necessary. With a
little effort, we can track what needs to be simulated.
Use the bp map for tracking. We need to mark the player's sectors and
all sectors where he has ships, planes or land units. Do the former
in bp_alloc(), and the latter in prep_ships(), prep_planes(),
prep_lands().
Skip sectors not so marked. This requires delaying prepare_sects()
until after prep_ships(), prep_planes(), prep_lands(). Their order
doesn't actually matter: prep_ships() & friends only spend money, and
nothing in preparation depends on whether the country is still
solvent.
Skip ships, planes and land units in sectors not so marked.
This speeds up budget by around a third in my testing, more for small
countries. Roughly 15% slower than before the fix for repairs abroad.
The update has to do a bit more work than before, but the performance
difference is lost in the noise.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
The update visits sectors in increasing order of country number.
Within a country, it visits in increasing order of sector number,
which is effectively top to bottom, left to right, starting with
absolute 0,0.
The order doesn't actually matter. Before Chainsaw's option BUDGET,
the update simply visited the sectors in sector number order. Go back
to that order, because it's faster. For the update, it's a few
percent in my testing. For budget, it's more than a third.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
The update visits ships, planes and land units in increasing order of
country number. Within a country, it visits first ships, then planes,
then land units, each in increasing order of unit number.
The order is relevant when money, materials and work don't suffice to
build everything.
Money is charged to the owner, so only the relative order for the same
owner matters there. One order is as good as any.
Work and materials come from the sector, so only the relative order in
each sector matters. The current order unfairly prefers countries
with lower country numbers. Mitigating factor: the affected countries
need to be friendly (ships only) or allied.
The unfairness goes back to Chainsaw's option BUDGET. See the commit
before previous for more detailed historical notes.
The update test demonstrates the unfair behavior: sector 14,6 builds
ships 95/97 owned by country#1, but not 96 owned by country#7.
Likewise, planes 95/96/97 and land units 95/96/97.
Go back to the the pre-BUDGET order: first ships, then planes, then
land units, all in increasing order of unit number, regardless of
owner.
The update test now builds ship, plane and land unit 96 instead of 97.
Bonus: speeds up both the update and budget by a similar absolute
amount. For budget, this is roughly a factor of two in my testing.
For the update, which does much more, it's around 10%.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
Ship, plane and land unit repair uses new work, except in sectors
owned by countries with a higher country number.
This inconsistency is an artifact of how the update is sequenced: we
work on countries one after the other. A country's ships, planes and
land units get repaired before higher-numbered countries' sectors
produce. Any ship, plane and land unit repairs in such sectors use
old work instead of new work.
Repair work use changed several times during Empire's history.
In BSD Empire, repairs use old work, because it updates ships and
planes before sectors.
Chainsaw added budget priorities and the budget command as option
BUDGET. Budget priorities let players choose separately for ships,
planes and land units whether to use old or new work for repairs.
The option also changed the update to work on countries one after the
other, presumably to permit a more efficient implementation of the
budget command.
Chainsaw also introduced repairs in foreign sectors under option
ALLYHARBORWORK.
With BUDGET disabled, all repairs still use old work, whether at home
or abroad. With BUDGET enabled, work use of repairs at home depends
on budget priorities, but work use abroad depend on country numbers.
Both options became standard in Empire 2.
Since v4.3.6, repairs at home always use new work (commit 967299a and
commit 520446e).
To make repairs abroad always use new work as well, we need to update
all sectors before any ship repair. This is straightforward: split
the loop over countries between sectors and unit building. For
symmetry, also split it between unit maintenance and sectors.
The budget command is differently broken, and will be fixed next.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
People in sectors first eat, then build the sector, then produce.
People in ships produce, eat, then build.
The starvation command can be off for fishing vessels, because it
doesn't consider the food they produce.
Change ships to match sectors. "Fixes" starvation. Fishing boats and
oil derricks being repaired at sea become a bit more productive.
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>
Replace the fixed $1 per ETU maintenance for capital/city sectors that
are at least 60% efficient by a configurable maintenance cost, payable
regardless of efficiency. The only change in the default
configuration is that inefficient capitals now pay maintenance.
Charging sector maintenance regardless of efficiency is consistent
with unit maintenance.
New struct dchrstr member d_maint and sector-chr selector maint. Make
show_sect_build() show it. Change produce_sect() to record
maintenance in new slot p_sect[SCT_MAINT] instead of abusing
p_sect[SCT_CAPIT]. Replace the "Capital maintenance" line in budget
by "Sector maintenance".
Food supply during update adds complexity to the update. How much
good it does to players is highly doubtful; certainly nobody can rely
on it. It isn't covered by the starvation command. Starving ships or
land units can steal enough food from their sector to make it starve,
too. Finally, the supply code is notoriously hard to use correctly.
We don't know of issues with the update's use, but we haven't
convinced ourselves that there aren't any either.
(all): Depend on info.
Flatten info directory. This undoes the move to one subdirectory per
chapter, which was done during Empire 2. The structure doesn't buy us
much, as the info name space is flat, and it complicates makefiles.
Overhaul info.pl:
- It now wants to run in the root of the build tree.
- Information on source files and subjects is now stored in makefiles,
thus info.pl no longer picks up random junk from the file system.
- Clean up Perl anachronisms, in particular use subroutine arguments and
results rather than global variables where convenient.
- Change format of diagnostics to the common format used by GNU tools,
so that Emacs and the like can parse it.
- Catch missing .SA.
- When creating a new subject file, cowardly refuse to overwrite an
existing file.
- Subject files contain topics sorted by chapter, then by name. The
order of chapters used to depend on how Perl sorts hash keys. Fix
it.
2005-12-22 10:09:17 +00:00
Renamed from info/Concepts/Update-sequence.t (Browse further)
