Transports that affect protection?

Transports that affect protection?

[Lincoln Peters]

Suppose that, in knightmare.g, an army of knights is attacking a walled
city.  The wall usually provides 1000% protection against normal attacks
(they can only attack the wall), so the army is going to have one heck
of a time taking the city.  On the other hand, if a siege tower moves
adjacent to the city, any knights within the tower should be able to
attack the city and ignore the wall.  The same is true for knights who
attack from flying vehicles or from the backs of flying monsters.

I know that Eric added a lot of new protection features to Xconq
recently, but has anyone ever considered how one's transport might
affect how one's attacks are affected by a defender's various
protections?

---
Lincoln Peters
<sampln@sbcglobal.net>

When the wind is great, bow before it;
when the wind is heavy, yield to it.

Re: Transports that affect protection?

[Eric McDonald]

On Mon, 27 Sep 2004, Lincoln Peters wrote:

> city.  The wall usually provides 1000% protection against normal attacks
> (they can only attack the wall), so the army is going to have one heck
> of a time taking the city.  On the other hand, if a siege tower moves
> adjacent to the city, any knights within the tower should be able to
> attack the city and ignore the wall.  The same is true for knights who
> attack from flying vehicles or from the backs of flying monsters.

It is tempting to classify this as a sort of elevation-dependent 
problem.

As I recall, there is already a property out there which affects 
an occupant's height (for the purpose of vision). Perhaps this 
could be commandeered for some sort of attack modification as 
well. Just a thought....

> recently, but has anyone ever considered how one's transport might
> affect how one's attacks are affected by a defender's various
> protections?

I would probably restate the problem as how a transport modifies 
its occupant's hit chance versus various targets. I believe that 
there is already a sort of generalized occupant hit chance 
modifier table, a TableUU between transport and occupant. I think 
what you are proposing would perhaps require something like 
'transport-adds-hit-chance-against' (one would not be able to 
specify an occupant type in this case, since we don't have 3D 
tables, __just the type of the occ's transport and the type of 
the defender).

> When the wind is great, bow before it;
> when the wind is heavy, yield to it.

If Sun Tzu wrote that, the Mongols should have had one of their 
vassals read it to them before they attempted their invasions of 
Japan.

Eric

Re: Transports that affect protection?

[mskala]

On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, Eric McDonald wrote:
> As I recall, there is already a property out there which affects 
> an occupant's height (for the purpose of vision). Perhaps this 
> could be commandeered for some sort of attack modification as 
> well. Just a thought....

What if you made the siege tower the attacker, modified by the knights in
it, instead of the knights the attackers modified by the siege
tower?  Having the siege tower be the attacker may be less intuitive, but
it might fit more easily into the existing capabilities of XConq.
-- 
Matthew Skala
mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca                    Embrace and defend.
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/

Re: Transports that affect protection?

[Eric McDonald]

mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca wrote:
> On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, Eric McDonald wrote:
> 
>>As I recall, there is already a property out there which affects 
>>an occupant's height (for the purpose of vision). Perhaps this 
>>could be commandeered for some sort of attack modification as 
>>well. Just a thought....
> 
> 
> What if you made the siege tower the attacker, modified by the knights in
> it, instead of the knights the attackers modified by the siege
> tower?  Having the siege tower be the attacker may be less intuitive, but
> it might fit more easily into the existing capabilities of XConq.

If you can tell us which tables could be utilized to do that (with model 
0 combat; it seems to be possible with model 1 combat), I am sure that 
anyone who is interested in item units would be thrilled. From my 
vantage point, I cannot see how it could be done with current tools. 
That is why I proposed the 'occupant-adds-hit-chance', 
'occupant-adds-damage', etc... tables a while back ago when we were on 
the subject of item units. I would love to be proven wrong on this, 
because it means less work further down the road.

The only way that I see to do something like this with existing tables 
would be to make the siege tower ACP-less by default, and then have its 
occupants add ACP to it. Even though I added this feature a while back 
ago, it is not perfect in that, currently, you must wait until the next 
turn for the new ACP value to take effect. More modifications to the 
kernel scheduler and related code are required before the ACP mod will 
be able to take effect in the same turn.

Or, see if the relevant tables work in combat model 1.

Eric

Re: Transports that affect protection?

[mskala]

On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, Eric McDonald wrote:
> If you can tell us which tables could be utilized to do that (with model 
> 0 combat; it seems to be possible with model 1 combat), I am sure that 

Hm.  I had a vague idea that there were a lot of tables for occupants'
effects on their transports, but it looks like I may have been thinking of
your proposal rather than what's actually implemented.  All I can find now
is occupant-combat, which actually goes the other way (transport
affecting occupants, as the original poster wanted) and it seems to be
unimplemented.
-- 
Matthew Skala
mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca                    Embrace and defend.
http://ansuz.sooke.bc.ca/

Re: Transports that affect protection?

[Eric McDonald]

mskala@ansuz.sooke.bc.ca wrote:
> Hm.  I had a vague idea that there were a lot of tables for occupants'
> effects on their transports, but it looks like I may have been thinking of
> your proposal rather than what's actually implemented.  All I can find now
> is occupant-combat, which actually goes the other way (transport
> affecting occupants, as the original poster wanted) and it seems to be
> unimplemented.

I looked at that the other day. As I recall, it is checked, but does not 
work in the way advertised. Even though it is supposedly a percentage 
table, the code only treats it as a boolean (i.e., merely checks to see 
if it is 0 (false) or not). One more thing to fix....

Eric

Xconq - it's all about pushing onto todo stacks at a rate faster than 
they are being popped.

Re: Transports that affect protection?

[Lincoln Peters]

On Tue, 2004-09-28 at 12:12, Eric McDonald wrote:
> On Mon, 27 Sep 2004, Lincoln Peters wrote:
> > city.  The wall usually provides 1000% protection against normal attacks
> > (they can only attack the wall), so the army is going to have one heck
> > of a time taking the city.  On the other hand, if a siege tower moves
> > adjacent to the city, any knights within the tower should be able to
> > attack the city and ignore the wall.  The same is true for knights who
> > attack from flying vehicles or from the backs of flying monsters.
> 
> It is tempting to classify this as a sort of elevation-dependent 
> problem.
> 
> As I recall, there is already a property out there which affects 
> an occupant's height (for the purpose of vision). Perhaps this 
> could be commandeered for some sort of attack modification as 
> well. Just a thought....

That is an interesting thought, and I can see how it might solve this
problem.

> I would probably restate the problem as how a transport modifies 
> its occupant's hit chance versus various targets. I believe that 
> there is already a sort of generalized occupant hit chance 
> modifier table, a TableUU between transport and occupant. I think 
> what you are proposing would perhaps require something like 
> 'transport-adds-hit-chance-against' (one would not be able to 
> specify an occupant type in this case, since we don't have 3D 
> tables, __just the type of the occ's transport and the type of 
> the defender).

Somehow, I had not realized that a 3D table might be required to do
exactly what I was describing.  A "transport-adds-hit-chance-against"
table should work in my case, though.


I'll add that to the "to-do" list for knightmare.g, then implement it
there when it is implemented in the kernel.

(In case your wondering, I think I'm close to having an Alpha release
ready, but my off-line schedule is such that I can't predict exactly
when.)

---
Lincoln Peters
<sampln@sbcglobal.net>

Parts that positively cannot be assembled in improper order will be.

Re: Transports that affect protection?

[Eric McDonald]

On Tue, 28 Sep 2004, Lincoln Peters wrote:

> I'll add that to the "to-do" list for knightmare.g, then implement it
> there when it is implemented in the kernel.

Actually, if you provide the table commented out, it 
will make it easier for me to test things when I implement it in 
the kernel.

Eric