Spies assaulting a foreign sector have only a 10% chance to evade
detection, regardless of efficiency. With odds like that, players
basically don't bother.
All the other spy detection checks use LND_SPY_DETECT_CHANCE(eff),
which gives 100% spies a 90% chance to evade detection. That's
perhaps a bit to good here, so let's try LND_SPY_DETECT_CHANCE(eff/2).
A 100% spy now has a 40% chance to sneak ashore undetected.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
Since the previous commit, sneak_ashore() doesn't depend on a previous
get_oland() anymore, so the att_get_offense() is unnecessarily. Move
it across att_get_offense() next to the other special case "assault
own sector".
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
Assaulting a foreign sector with nothing but spies is special: the
spies sneak ashore. It is, however, more special than it should be:
the spies use no mobility and ignore landmines. They do use mobility
and hit landmines in other assaults. Assaulting your own sector with
nothing but spies is more costly and more risky than assaulting a
foreign one. This makes no sense. Has been that way since spies were
added in 4.0.0.
It's that way because sneaking ashore uses its own code to move the
spies instead of move_in_land() via att_move_in_off(). It can't use
move_in_land(), because that prints an unwanted "now occupies"
message, and destroys the list of assaulting units, which we still
need to catch and shoot spies.
Factor the code to move attacking land units to the target sector out
of move_in_land() into att_move_land(), and use that for sneaking
ashore. This makes the spies use mobility and hit landmines even when
they sneak.
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>
Why upgrade? I'm not a lawyer, but here's my take on the differences
to version 2:
* Software patents: better protection against abuse of patents to
prevent users from exercising the rights under the GPL. I doubt
we'll get hit with a patent suit, but it's a good move just on
general principles.
* License compatibility: compatible with more free licenses, i.e. can
"steal" more free software for use in Empire. I don't expect to steal
much, but it's nice to have the option.
* Definition of "source code": modernization of some details for today's
networked world, to make it easier to distribute the software. Not
really relevant to us now, as we normally distribute full source code.
* Tivoization: this is about putting GPL-licensed software in hardware,
then make the hardware refuse to run modified software. "Neat" trick
to effectively deny its users their rights under the GPL. Abuse was
"pioneered" by TiVo (popular digital video recorders). GPLv3 forbids
it. Unlikely to become a problem for us.
* Internationalization: more careful wording, to harden the license
outside the US. The lawyers tell us it better be done that way.
* License violations: friendlier way to deal with license violations.
This has come out of past experience enforcing the GPL.
* Additional permissions: Probably not relevant to us.
Also include myself in the list of principal authors.
Replacing getrel(getnatp(US), THEM) by relations_with(US, THEM) makes
a difference only when US equals THEM. Replace in places where it's
obvious that they're not equal.
Note: getsect() sets player->owner to "player is god or owns this
sector". Thus, after getsect(..., §), sect.sct_own ==
player->cnum implies player->owner. Conversely, !player->owner
implies sect.sct_own != player->cnum. Similarly for getship(),
getplane() and nxtitem().
SLOW_WAR has issues:
* The check whether the attacker old-owns the attacked sector is
broken, because att_abort() uses sect.sct_oldown uninitialized.
Spotted by the Clang Static Analyzer.
* Its implementation in setrel() is somewhat scary. It's actually
okay, because that part of setrel() only runs within decl(). Other
callers don't reach it: update_main() because player->god != 0
there, and the rest because they never pass a rel < HOSTILE.
* Documentation is a bit vague.
SLOW_WAR hasn't been used in a public game in years. Fixing it is not
worth it, so remove it instead.
other. Ensure headers in include/ can be included in any order
(except for econfig-spec.h, which is special). New header types.h to
help avoid inclusion cycles. Sort include directives. Remove some
superflous includes.
