51 lines
2.8 KiB
Perl
51 lines
2.8 KiB
Perl
.TH Concept Autonavigation
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.NA Autonav "Giving ships automatic sailing orders"
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.LV Expert
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In a very short while after acquiring ships the effort of moving ships after
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every update gets very boring. And the more ships you have, the more work
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it is. Hence the concept of autonavigation. Like any self-respecting
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dictator, you don't personally drive your ships around (except when you want
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to), instead you command you ship captains to take their vessels to a
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specified destination. This is done via the \*Qorder\*U command.
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.s1
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Each ship can be ordered to proceed to a destination. During each update,
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the ship will try and use ALL the mobility it has and use the shortest
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possible path. It will also avoid any known mines (sectors marked
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with an 'X' or 'x' on your bmap). Note that this movement is all
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done before mobility is accumulated, so that after the update is
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complete the ship will have a full updates worth of mobility
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in case you need to move it by hand. Should a ship be fired upon
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by forts or strike a mine they will stop moving! This will prevent
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your ship from foolishly getting sunk in enemy waters. The
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\*Qorder\*U command covers many special cases.
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.s1
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The autonavigation capability is dependent upon the per country map database
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accessed via the \*Qbmap\*U command. If you order a vessel to a destination
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that causes it to cross a previously unexplored area, the ship will attempt
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to cross that area as if it were water. One of the features of the bmap
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functionality is that when a ship is navigated, it automatically uses its
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radar to see the local sectors (much like real life). This sector information
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is added to the per country map database. Thus upon running into a previously
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unknown obstruction, that information is added to the map database and on the
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next update, a new path to the destination will be calculated which avoids
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the obstruction. This process applied iteratively means that a ships will
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eventually find its way around any obstruction, provided that a path exists.
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In reality, this is a limit to this process. In order to limit the processing
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that is done to find a path to the destination, the internal path string is
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limited to 28 characters.
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.s1
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Autonavigation also supports autotrading.
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By specifying two destinations and two commodities,
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the ship will move back and forth between the two destination loading and
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unloading the appropriate commodities.
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Specific examples can be found in info \*Qorder\*U.
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.s1
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Autonavigation also supports automatic resource production at sea.
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See info \*QAutofish\*U for details.
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.s1
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The same rules for navigating, loading, and unloading apply for
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Autonavigation as they do when you do these things by hand, namely
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that you may only use harbours owned by nations which consider you to
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be a friendly trading partner (see info \*Qrelations\*U).
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.s1
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.SA "navigate, order, Ships, Updates, Autofish"
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