On 19.08.2012 02:31, Michael T. Pope wrote:
> On Sat, 18 Aug 2012 04:48:03 PM Michael Vehrs wrote:
>
>> I see the similarities. We will also need to create a random new player
>> for the purpose of owning the mercenaries until they are delivered.
>>
> Quite so. Thinking about it a bit more, repurposing another nation's REF is
> probably no good as we can not guarantee there will be a suitable one
> available--- all the other nations might still be in the game and hostile
> towards you.
>
I agree.
>
>> And
>> what about foreign relations with that player? Can another player
>> declare war on it and send your precious mercenaries to the bottom of
>> the ocean?
>>
> I see no reason to disallow that, and it might even be more work to make it
> impossible:-). Given that these mercenaries appear during the revolution, I
> would expect at least that the REF the rebel player is fighting to be at war
> with the<mercenary-supplier> from the point it is created. We could take
> care to create the convoy at an entry location where it is likely to be able
> to sail in and disembark its land units in the least amount of moves[1], but
> the rebel player might have only a few colonies located well away from the
> high seas so we will never be able to guarantee that the mercenaries will
> arrive unchallenged.
>
> Unless of course, we implement the mercenary force entirely in the server as a
> sort of `special effect', with it sailing in, dropping off the land units, and
> sailing away all in one hit without any players having an opportunity to do
> anything about it, and reckless disregard for unit movement limits:-). Highly
> artificial I admit, but probably saves work on what is not that big a feature.
>
Nah, that would be the easy way out.
> Whichever way this ends up going, some server support will be needed for the
> bit where the land units change owner. We currently can not do this at the
> player level, a ChangeOwnerMessage would be needed to be invented. It would
> be a nice feature to make such functionality generally available. There have
> been games where I would have liked to send a bunch of artillery to an ailing
> buffer state. Indeed it was possible briefly when I had trading of units
> working (BTW a patch to fix broken goods trading is happening slowly in the
> background).
>
> Cheers,
> Mike Pope
>
We already have stubs for a diplomatic message offering or demanding
units. In order to implement that, we would also need a ChangeOwnerMessage.
Regards
Michael
> [1] Something like this, but probably should find a path to a land tile near
> the colony, not to the colony itself.
>
> paths = {}
> for all rebel colonies
> if colony-is-port
> paths += findPath(man-o-war, getBestEntry(colony), colony))
> if paths.isEmpty
> return null // no port => rebel has lost
> paths.sort(shortestPathComparator)
> for path in paths
> if ! path-gets-too-close-to-hostile-naval
> return path
> return paths.get(0) // tough it out
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