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>
Commit db1ac2ed (v4.3.6) introduced a separate territory for deities,
and made the territory command use it by default for deities. Deities
can still access the old default territory as territory number 0.
Selectors terr, terr0 (alias for terr), terr1, terr2, terr3 remained
unchanged, and a new selector dterr was created to let deities access
the deity territory.
Make selector terr virtual, so that it can do "the right thing", just
like the territory command: select territory 0 for mortals, and the
deity territory for deities.
Unfortunately, this requires us to switch xdump to use terr0 instead
of terr, because otherwise the deity xdump would contain the deity
territory twice, and territory 0 not at all.
The abstract idea of tying ships and land units to a logistical tether
is sound, the concrete implementation as option FUEL is flawed. It
adds too much busy-work to the game to be enjoyable. It hasn't been
enabled in a public game for years. The code implementing it is ugly,
repetitive, and a burden to maintain.
Remove selector fuel from ship_ca[] and land_ca[], and selectors
fuelc, fuelu from mchr_ca[] and lchr_ca[]. Remove fields fuelc, fuelu
from ship.config and land.config.
Remove command fuel from player_coms[].
Deprecate edit key 'B' in doship(), dounit(), and don't show it in
pr_ship(), pr_land().
Drop opt_FUEL code from build_ship(), shi(), sdump(), ship_damage(),
show_ship_stats(), do_mob_ship(), nav_ship(), build_land(), land(),
ldump(), land_damage(), show_land_stats(), do_mob_land(),
resupply_all(), resupply_commod(), get_minimum(), has_supply(),
unit_list(), vers().
Remove opt_FUEL, fuel_mult, struct shpstr member shp_fuel, struct
mchrstr members m_fuelc and m_fuelu, M_OILER, struct lndstr member
lnd_fuel, struct lchrstr members l_fuelc and l_fuelu, fuel(), and
auto_fuel_ship().
(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.
