Both ordinary ground combat and guerrilla combat basically kill
combatants one by one randomly until one side is eliminated. The odds
of each side taking a hit are computed from combat strengths.
Ordinary combat factors bonuses into the odds. It doesn't mess with
the number of men.
Guerrilla combat does the same for the bonus due to relative
happiness. It doesn't for land units with security capability: these
fight as if they had twice as many military. Changes both odds and
number of men. This inflates the body count reported to the sector
owner. Visible in tests/update/journal.log, where rebels kill 110 out
of 70 military. It also complicates take_casualties(). Has been that
way since security land units were added in Chainsaw 3.
To fix the body count and simplify take_casualties(), make capability
security affect only the odds, not the number of men. Without further
adjustments, this would reduce guerrilla losses: fewer men mean fewer
combat rounds mean fewer chances for rebels to die. To compensate,
increase the multiplier from two to four. This should make security
units a bit tougher. Document the bonus in "info Guerrilla".
More body count bugs remain.
Reusing ordinary combat rules and code for guerrilla combat would be
nice, but isn't feasible for me right now.
Signed-off-by: Markus Armbruster <armbru@pond.sub.org>
--- How to build the info pages ---
Make remakes info pages, table of contents and index automatically.
This requires Perl 5 and troff. To remake just formatted info pages,
run make info.
To make HTML info, run make html. This is not done by default. The
recommended start page is TOP.html, but you may also like all.html.
To make a single PostScript file for printing, run make info.ps. This
is not done by default. The result is currently quite ugly.
--- How to add a new info page ---
To create a new info page, follow these steps:
1. Decide which chapter to put your info page in:
Commands - Empire Commands
Concepts - Game concepts
Introduction - General info about playing Empire
Server - Info about the server
2. Decide what to call your info page:
- If it's an Empire command, give it the same name as the command
as listed in lib/player/empmod.c
- Info names are case-insensitive. Make sure there isn't another
one that differs only in case.
- Make sure your info page doesn't have the same name as an existing
subject or chapter.
3. Format your info page.
The file name for a page NAME must be NAME.t. It's easiest to start
with an existing file.
The first line must be a title header:
.TH arg1 arg2
- arg1 should be the chapter, one of: Command, Concept,
Introduction, Server
- arg2 is the title of your page. If it contains more than one
word, make sure it's in double quotes
- if the info page is for an Empire command, then arg2 must be the
command name in ALL UPPERCASE.
The second line must be a name header:
.NA arg1 arg2
- arg1 must be the name
- if the info page is for an Empire command, then arg2 must be the
exact command name
- arg2 is a one-line description of the info page which will be put
on the subject pages that your info page belongs to. It should be
in double quotes
The third line must be a level header:
.LV arg
- arg must be a level, one of Basic, Expert, Obsolete
The last line should be a see also:
.SA "item1, item2, ..., subject1, subject2"
- the stuff in quotes is a list of other info pages which are
related to this page, and subjects to which this page belongs.
- the stuff in quotes must all be on the same line
- You must include at least one subject in the list (at the end of
the list by convention). Valid subjects are listed in
info/subjects.mk.
The lines in between can contain troff requests. The following
additional requests are available:
Empire command syntax:
.SY "command <ARGS>"
An Empire command example:
.EX "command args"
No Formatting:
.NF
this stuff
won't be formatted
.FI
Begin paragraph:
.s1
Item in a description:
.L
Fancy troff magic is prone to break HTML output.
4. Format your info page, update table of contents and index
Run make info html. If it fails, peruse the error messages and fix
your info page. Run tests/info-test for additional consistency
checking.
==APPENDIX A - What exactly the Perl scripts do==
The scripts read all of the info pages and create a two-level table of
contents for them, organized by subject. An info page belongs to a
subject if that subject appears as an entry in the .SA ("SEE ALSO")
field of the info page.
The output of these scripts is a bunch of .t files. The file TOP.t is
the top-level table of contents and lists all of the subjects. Then
for each SUBJECT, a SUBJECT.t file is created, listing all of the info
pages that belong to it.
Markus Armbruster
849af9e06c